A superadditivity and submultiplicativity property for cardinalities of sumsets

This is a survey of old and new problems and results in additive number theory.

Let $A$ and $H$ be nonempty finite sets of integers and positive integers, respectively. The generalized $H$-fold sumset, denoted by $H^{(r)}A$, is the union of the sumsets $h^{(r)}A$ for $h\in H$ where, the sumset $h^{(r)}A$ is the set of all integers that can be represented as a sum of $h$ elements from $A$ with no summand in the representation appearing more than $r$ times. In this paper, we find the optimal lower bound for the cardinality of $H^{(r)}A$, i.e., for $|H^{(r)...

We develop the theory of the additive dimension ${\rm dim} (A)$, i.e. the size of a maximal dissociated subset of a set $A$. It was shown that the additive dimension is closely connected with the growth of higher sumsets $nA$ of our set $A$. We apply this approach to demonstrate that for any small multiplicative subgroup $\Gamma$ the sequence $|n\Gamma|$ grows very fast. Also, we obtain a series of applications to the sum--product phenomenon and to the Balog--Wooley decomposi...

Let $h$ be a positive integer and $A, B_1, B_2,\dots, B_h$ be finite sets in a commutative group. We bound $|A+B_1+...+B_h|$ from above in terms of $|A|, |A+B_1|,\dots,|A+B_h|$ and $h$. Extremal examples, which demonstrate that the bound is asymptotically sharp in all the parameters, are furthermore provided.

Let $A$ be a finite set of integers. We show that if $k$ is a prime power or a product of two distinct primes then $$|A+k\cdot A|\geq(k+1)|A|-\lceil k(k+2)/4\rceil$$ provided $|A|\geq (k-1)^{2}k!$, where $A+k\cdot A=\{a+kb:\ a,b\in A\}$. We also establish the inequality $|A+4\cdot A|\geq 5|A|-6 $ for $|A|\geq 5$.

In this note we find the optimal lower bound for the size of the sumsets $HA$ and $H\,\hat{}A$ over finite sets $H, A$ of nonnegative integers, where $HA = \bigcup_{h\in H} hA$ and $H\,\hat{}A = \bigcup_{h\in H} h\,\hat{}A$. We also find the underlying algebraic structure of the sets $A$ and $H$ for which the size of the sumsets $HA$ and $H\,\hat{}A$ is minimum.

Let A and B be finite sets in a commutative group. We bound |A+hB| in terms of |A|, |A+B| and h. We provide a submultiplicative upper bound that improves on the existing bound of Imre Ruzsa by inserting a factor that decreases with h.

In this survey paper we discuss some recent results and related open questions in additive combinatorics, in particular, questions about sumsets in finite abelian groups.

Given a set of integers $A$ and an integer $k$, write $A+k\cdot A$ for the set $\{a+kb:a\in A,b\in A\}$. Hanson and Petridis showed that if $|A+A|\le K|A|$ then $|A+2\cdot A|\le K^{2.95}|A|$. At a presentation of this result, Petridis stated that the highest known value for $\frac{\log(|A+2\cdot A|/|A|)}{\log(|A+A|/|A|)}$ (bounded above by 2.95) was $\frac{\log 4}{\log 3}$. We show that, for all $\epsilon>0$, there exist $A$ and $K$ with $|A+A|\le K|A|$ but with $|A+2\cdot A|...

We prove the following theorem: for all positive integers $b$ there exists a positive integer $k$, such that for every finite set $A$ of integers with cardinality $|A| > 1$, we have either $$ |A + ... + A| \geq |A|^b$$ or $$ |A \cdot ... \cdot A| \geq |A|^b$$ where $A + ... + A$ and $A \cdot ... \cdot A$ are the collections of $k$-fold sums and products of elements of $A$ respectively. This is progress towards a conjecture of Erd\"os and Szemer\'edi on sum and product sets.