The relative sizes of sumsets and difference sets

Let A be a finite subset of the integers or, more generally, of any abelian group, written additively. The set A has "more sums than differences" if |A+A|>|A-A|. A set with this property is called an MSTD set. This paper gives explicit constructions of families of MSTD sets of integers.

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|...

For a subset A of a finite abelian group G we define Sigma(A)={sum_{a\in B}a:B\subset A}. In the case that Sigma(A) has trivial stabiliser, one may deduce that the size of Sigma(A) is at least quadratic in |A|; the bound |Sigma(A)|>= |A|^{2}/64 has recently been obtained by De Vos, Goddyn, Mohar and Samal. We improve this bound to the asymptotically best possible result |Sigma(A)|>= (1/4-o(1))|A|^{2}. We also study a related problem in which A is any subset of Z_{n} with al...

We prove new results on additive properties of finite sets $A$ with small multiplicative doubling $|AA|\leq M|A|$ in the category of real/complex sets as well as multiplicative subgroups in the prime residue field. The improvements are based on new combinatorial lemmata, which may be of independent interest. Our main results are the inequality $$ |A-A|^3|AA|^5 \gtrsim |A|^{10}, $$ over the reals, "redistributing" the exponents in the textbook Elekes sum-product inequality a...

Let A be a subset of a finite abelian group G. We say that A is sum-free if there is no solution of the equation x + y = z, with x, y, z belonging to the set A. Let SF(G) denotes the set of all sum-free subets of $G$ and $\sigma(G)$ denotes the number $ n^{-1}(\log_2 |SF(G)|) $. In this article we shall improve the error term in the asymptotic formula of $\sigma(G)$ which was obtained recently by Ben Green and Ruzsa. The methods used are a slight refinement of methods develop...

Let $\mathbb G = (G, +)$ be a group (either abelian or not). Given $X, Y \subseteq G$, we denote by $\langle Y \rangle$ the subsemigroup of $\mathbb G$ generated by $Y$, and we set $$\gamma(Y) := \sup_{y_0 \in Y} \inf_{y_0 \ne y \in Y} {\rm ord}(y - y_0)$$ if $|Y| \ge 2$ and $\gamma(Y) := |Y|$ otherwise. We prove that if $\langle Y \rangle$ is commutative, $Y$ is non-empty, and $X+2Y \neq X + Y + y$ for some $y \in Y$, then $$ |X+Y| \ge |X|+\min(\gamma(Y), |Y| - 1). $$ Actual...

Let A and B be subsets of an elementary abelian 2-group G, none of which are contained in a coset of a proper subgroup. Extending onto potentially distinct summands a result of Hennecart and Plagne, we show that if |A+B|<|A|+|B|, then either A+B=G, or the complement of A+B in G is contained in a coset of a subgroup of index at least 8, whence |A+B| is at least 7/8 |G|. We indicate conditions for the containment to be strict, and establish a refinement in the case where the si...

We compare the size of the difference set $A-A$ to that of the set $kA$ of $k$-fold sums. We show the existence of sets such that $|kA| < |A-A|^{a_k}$ with $a_k<1$.

The aim of this paper is to prove a general version of Pl\"unnecke's inequality. Namely, assume that for finite sets $A$, $B_1, ... B_k$ we have information on the size of the sumsets $A+B_{i_1}+... +B_{i_l}$ for all choices of indices $i_1, ... i_l.$ Then we prove the existence of a non-empty subset $X$ of $A$ such that we have `good control' over the size of the sumset $X+B_1+... +B_k$. As an application of this result we generalize an inequality of \cite{gymr} concerning t...

Since addition is commutative but subtraction is not, the sumset S+S of a finite set S is predisposed to be smaller than the difference set S-S. In this paper, however, we show that each of the three possibilities (|S+S|>|S-S|, |S+S|=|S-S|, |S+S|<|S-S|) occur for a positive proportion of the subsets of {0, 1, ..., n-1}. We also show that the difference |S+S| - |S-S| can take any integer value, and we show that the expected number of omitted differences is asymptotically 6 whi...