Sum-product phenomena in F_p: a brief introduction

This is an expository account of the proof of the theorem of Bourgain, Glibichuk and Konyagin which provides non-trivial bounds for exponential sums over very small multiplicative subgroups of prime finite fields.

In this paper we obtain a series of asymptotic formulae in the sum--product phenomena over the prime field $\mathbf{F}_p$. In the proofs we use usual incidence theorems in $\mathbf{F}_p$, as well as the growth result in ${\rm SL}_2 (\mathbf{F}_p)$ due to Helfgott. Here some of our applications: $\bullet~$ a new bound for the number of the solutions to the equation $(a_1-a_2) (a_3-a_4) = (a'_1-a'_2) (a'_3-a'_4)$, $\,a_i, a'_i\in A$, $A$ is an arbitrary subset of $\mathbf{F}_...

Let $\mathbb{F}_p$ be the field of residue classes modulo a prime number $p$ and let $A$ be a non-empty subset of $\mathbb{F}_p.$ In this paper we give an explicit version of the sum-product estimate of Bourgain, Katz, Tao and Bourgain, Glibichuk, Konyagin on the size of $\max\{|A+A|, |AA|\}.$ In particular, our result implies that if $1<|A|\le p^{7/13}(\log p)^{-4/13},$ then $$ \max\{|A+A|, |AA|\}\gg \frac{|A|^{15/14}}{(\log|A|)^{2/7}} . $$

We show that there is significant cancellation in certain exponential sums over small multiplicative subgroups of finite fields, giving an exposition of the arguments by Bourgain and Chang.

The sum-product phenomena over a finite extension K of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ is explored. The main feature of the results is the fact that the implied constants are independent of $p$.

In the paper we obtain some new upper bounds for exponential sums over multiplicative subgroups G of F^*_p having sizes in the range [p^{c_1}, p^{c_2}], where c_1,c_2 are some absolute constants close to 1/2. As an application we prove that in symmetric case G is always an additive basis of order five, provided by |G| > p^{1/2} log^{1/3} p. Also the method allows us to give a new upper bound for Heilbronn's exponential sum.

A survey paper on some recent results on additive problems with prime powers.

Let q be a prime, A be a subset of a finite field $F=\Bbb Z/q\Bbb Z$, $|A|<\sqrt{|F|}$. We prove the estimate $\max(|A+A|,|A\cdot A|)\ge c|A|^{1+\epsilon}$ for some $\epsilon>0$ and c>0. This extends the result of J. Bourgain, N. Katz, and T. Tao.

Let $\mathbb{F}_p$ be the field of residue classes modulo a prime number $p$ and let $A$ be a nonempty subset of $\mathbb{F}_p$. In this paper we show that if $|A|\preceq p^{0.5}$, then \[ \max\{|A\pm A|,|AA|\}\succeq|A|^{13/12};\] if $|A|\succeq p^{0.5}$, then \[ \max\{|A\pm A|,|AA|\}\succapprox \min\{|A|^{13/12}(\frac{|A|}{p^{0.5}})^{1/12},|A|(\frac{p}{|A|})^{1/11}\}.\] These results slightly improve the estimates of Bourgain-Garaev and Shen. Sum-product estimates on differ...

Let ${\mathcal H}$ be a multiplicative subgroup of $\mathbb{F}_p^*$ of order $H>p^{1/4}$. We show that $$ \max_{(a,p)=1}\left|\sum_{x\in {\mathcal H}} {\mathbf{\,e}}_p(ax)\right| \le H^{1-31/2880+o(1)}, $$ where ${\mathbf{\,e}}_p(z) = \exp(2 \pi i z/p)$, which improves a result of Bourgain and Garaev (2009). We also obtain new estimates for double exponential sums with product $nx$ with $x \in {\mathcal H}$ and $n \in {\mathcal N}$ for a short interval ${\mathcal N}$ of conse...