The Haight-Ruzsa method for sets with more differences than multiple sums

For a non-empty $k$-element set $A$ of an additive abelian group $G$ and a positive integer $r \leq k$, we consider the set of elements of $G$ that can be written as a sum of $h$ elements of $A$ with at least $r$ distinct elements. We denote this set as $h^{(\geq r)}A$ for integers $h \geq r$. The set $h^{(\geq r)}A$ generalizes the classical sumsets $hA$ and $h\hat{}A$ for $r=1$ and $r=h$, respectively. Thus, we call the set $h^{(\geq r)}A$ the generalized sumset of $A$. By ...

For every $\epsilon > 0$ and $k \in \mathbb{N}$, Haight constructed a set $A \subset \mathbb{Z}_N$ ($\mathbb{Z}_N$ stands for the integers modulo $N$) for a suitable $N$, such that $A-A = \mathbb{Z}_N$ and $|kA| < \epsilon N$. Recently, Nathanson posed the problem of constructing sets $A \subset \mathbb{Z}_N$ for given polynomials $p$ and $q$, such that $p(A) = \mathbb{Z}_N$ and $|q(A)| < \epsilon N$, where $p(A)$ is the set $\{p(a_1, a_2, \dots, a_n)\phantom{.}\colon\phantom...

In our paper we study multiplicative properties of difference sets $A-A$ for large sets $A \subseteq \mathbb{Z}/q\mathbb{Z}$ in the case of composite $q$. We obtain a quantitative version of a result of A. Fish about the structure of the product sets $(A-A)(A-A)$. Also, we show that the multiplicative covering number of any difference set is always small.

For a finite abelian group $G$ and positive integers $m$ and $h$, we let $$\rho(G, m, h) = \min \{|hA| \; : \; A \subseteq G, |A|=m\}$$ and $$\rho_{\pm} (G, m, h) = \min \{|h_{\pm} A| \; : \; A \subseteq G, |A|=m\},$$ where $hA$ and $h_{\pm} A$ denote the $h$-fold sumset and the $h$-fold signed sumset of $A$, respectively. The study of $\rho(G, m, h)$ has a 200-year-old history and is now known for all $G$, $m$, and $h$. Here we prove that $\rho_{\pm}(G, m, h)$ equals $\rho (...

For a positive integer $h$ and a subset $A$ of a given finite abelian group, we let $hA$, $h \hat{\;} A$, and $h_{\pm}A$ denote the $h$-fold sumset, restricted sumset, and signed sumset of $A$, respectively. Here we review some of what is known and not yet known about the minimum sizes of these three types of sumsets, as well as their corresponding critical numbers. In particular, we discuss several new open direct and inverse problems.

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.

Let $m\geq 2$ be a positive integer. Given a set $E(\omega )\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ we define $r_{N}^{(m)}(\omega )$ to be the number of ways to represent $N\in \mathbb{Z}$ as any combination of sums $\textit{ and }$ differences of $m$ distinct elements of $E(\omega )$. In this paper, we prove the existence of a "thick" set $E(\omega )$ and a positive constant $K$ such that $r_{N}^{(m)}(\omega )<K$ for all $N\in \mathbb{Z}$. This is a generalization of a known theorem by Erd\H{...

Let $h\geq 2$ be a positive integer. For any subset $\mathcal{A}\subset \mathbb{Z}_n$, let $h^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}$ be the set of the elements of $\mathbb{Z}_n$ which are sums of $h$ distinct elements of $\mathcal{A}$. In this paper, we obtain some new results on $4^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}$ and $5^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}$. For example, we show that if $|\mathcal{A}|\geq 0.4045n$ and $n$ is odd, then $4^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}=\mathbb{Z}_{n}$; Under some conditions, if $n$ is even and $|...

Let $G$ be an additive abelian group and $h$ be a positive integer. For a nonempty finite subset $A=\{a_0, a_1,\ldots, a_{k-1}\}$ of $G$, we let \[h_{\underline{+}}A:=\{\Sigma_{i=0}^{k-1}\lambda_{i} a_{i}: (\lambda_{0}, \ldots, \lambda_{k-1}) \in \mathbb{Z}^{k},~ \Sigma_{i=0}^{k-1}|\lambda_{i}|=h \},\] be the {\it signed sumset} of $A$. The {\it direct problem} for the signed sumset $h_{\underline{+}}A$ is to find a nontrivial lower bound for $|h_{\underline{+}}A|$ in terms...

For a finite abelian group $G$ and positive integers $m$ and $h$, we let $$\rho(G, m, h) = \min \{|hA| \; : \; A \subseteq G, |A|=m\}$$ and $$\rho_{\pm} (G, m, h) = \min \{|h_{\pm} A| \; : \; A \subseteq G, |A|=m\},$$ where $hA$ and $h_{\pm} A$ denote the $h$-fold sumset and the $h$-fold signed sumset of $A$, respectively. The study of $\rho(G, m, h)$ has a 200-year-old history and is now known for all $G$, $m$, and $h$. In previous work we provided an upper bound for $\rho_{...