Squares and difference sets in finite fields

We show that if $h(x,y)=ax^2+bxy+cy^2\in \mathbb{Z}[x,y]$ satisfies $\Delta(h)=b^2-4ac\neq 0$, then any subset of $\{1,2,\dots,N\}$ lacking nonzero differences in the image of $h$ has size at most a constant depending on $h$ times $N\exp(-c\sqrt{\log N})$, where $c=c(h)>0$. We achieve this goal by adapting an $L^2$ density increment strategy previously used to establish analogous results for sums of one or more single-variable polynomials. Our exposition is thorough and self-...

For a given subset $A\subseteq \mathbb F_q^*$, we study the problem of finding a large packing set $B$ of $A$, that is, a set $B \subseteq \mathbb F_q^*$ such that $|AB|=|A||B|$. We prove the existence of such a $B$ of size $|B|\ge (q-1)/|A/A|$ and show that this bound is in general optimal. The case that $q=p$ is a prime and $A=\{1,2,\ldots,\lambda\}$ for some positive integer $\lambda$ is particularly interesting in view of the construction of limited-magnitude error corr...

Let ${\Bbb F}_q$ be a finite field of order $q.$ We prove that if $d\ge 2$ is even and $E \subset {\Bbb F}_q^d$ with $|E| \ge 9q^{\frac{d}{2}}$ then $$ {\Bbb F}_q=\frac{\Delta(E)}{\Delta(E)}=\left\{ \frac{a}{b}: a \in \Delta(E), b \in \Delta(E) \backslash \{0\} \right\},$$ where $$ \Delta(E)=\{||x-y||: x,y \in E\}, \ ||x||=x_1^2+x_2^2+\cdots+x_d^2.$$ If the dimension $d$ is odd and $E\subset \mathbb F_q^d$ with $|E|\ge 6q^{\frac{d}{2}},$ then $$ \{0\}\cup\mathbb F_q^+ \subset...

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.

In this paper, we study some topics concerning the additive decompositions of the set $D_k$ of all $k$th power residues modulo a prime $p$. For example, given a positive integer $k\ge2$, we prove that $$\lim_{x\rightarrow+\infty}\frac{B(x)}{\pi(x)}=0,$$ where $\pi(x)$ is the number of primes $p\le x$ and $B(x)$ denotes the cardinality of the set $$\{p\le x: p\equiv1\pmod k; D_k\ \text{has a non-trivial 2-additive decomposition}\}.$$

In this paper we prove some results on sum-product estimates over arbitrary finite fields. More precisely, we show that for sufficiently small sets $A\subset \mathbb{F}_q$ we have \[|(A-A)^2+(A-A)^2|\gg |A|^{1+\frac{1}{21}}.\] This can be viewed as the Erd\H{o}s distinct distances problem for Cartesian product sets over arbitrary finite fields. We also prove that \[\max\{|A+A|, |A^2+A^2|\}\gg |A|^{1+\frac{1}{42}}, ~|A+A^2|\gg |A|^{1+\frac{1}{84}}.\]

Given a prime $p\ge5$ and an integer $s\ge1$, we show that there exists an integer $M$ such that for any quadratic polynomial $f$ with coefficients in the ring of integers modulo $p^s$, such that $f$ is not a square, if a sequence $(f(1),\dots,f(N))$ is a sequence of squares, then $N$ is at most $M$. We obtain this result by reducing to the case where $f$ has an invertible dominant coefficient.

In this paper we present a procedure which allows to transform a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{Z}_{p}$ into a set $ A'$ such that $ |2\hspace{0.15cm}\widehat{} A'|\leq|2\hspace{0.15cm}\widehat{} A | $, where $2\hspace{0.15cm}\widehat{} A$ is defined to be the set $\left\{a+b:a\neq b,\;a,b\in A\right\}$. From this result, we get some lower bounds for $ |2\hspace{0.15cm}\widehat{} A| $. Finally, we give some remarks related to the problem for which sets $A\subset \mathbb{Z}_{p}$ we ha...

We show that there exists an upper bound for the number of squares in arithmetic progression over a number field that depends only on the degree of the field. We show that this bound is 5 for quadratic fields, and also that the result generalizes to $k$-powers for $k>1$.

In a recent paper we proved that if (*)=\inf_{|z_k|=1}\max_{v=1,...,n^2-n} |\sum_{k=1}^n z_k^v|, then (*)=\sqrt{n-1} if n-1 is a prime power. We proved that a construction of Fabrykowski gives minimal systems (z_1,...,z_n) to this problem. The construction depends on the existence of perfect difference sets of order n-1. As an open problem we asked whether all solutions would arise from this construction. In this paper we show that this is true and in fact if there exist no p...