Additive Combinatorics: A Menu of Research Problems

This is a survey of open problems in different parts of combinatorial and additive number theory. The paper is based on lectures at the Centre de Recerca Matematica in Barcelona on January 23 and January 25, 2008.

Recently, additive combinatorics has blossomed into a vibrant area in mathematical sciences. But it seems to be a difficult area to define - perhaps because of a blend of ideas and techniques from several seemingly unrelated contexts which are used there. One might say that additive combinatorics is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of combinatorial properties of algebraic objects, for instance, Abelian groups, rings, or fields. This emerging field has seen tremend...

About twenty years ago, Green wrote a survey article on the utility of looking at toy versions over finite fields of problems in additive combinatorics. This article was extremely influential, and the rapid development of additive combinatorics necessitated a follow-up survey ten years later, which was written by Wolf. Since the publication of Wolf's article, an immense amount of progress has been made on several central open problems in additive combinatorics in both the fin...

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

These notes are a summary of the problem session discussions at various CANT (Combinatorial and Additive Number Theory Conferences). Currently they include all years from 2009 through 2019 (inclusive); the goal is to supplement this file each year. These additions will include the problem session notes from that year, and occasionally discussions on progress on previous problems. If you are interested in pursuing any of these problems and want additional information as to pro...

We introduce a new form of the polynomial method based on what we call "shift operators," which we use to give efficient and intuitive new proofs of results previously shown using a wide range of polynomial methods, including Alon's Combinatorial Nullstellensatz and the Croot-Lev-Pach method. We end by discussing some potential new directions in which the tools introduced here may be fruitfully applied.

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.

This is a survey of the use of Fourier analysis in additive combinatorics, with a particular focus on situations where it cannot be straightforwardly applied, but needs to be generalized first. Sometimes very satisfactory generalizations exist, while sometimes we have to make do with theories that have some of the desirable properties of Fourier analysis but not all of them. In the latter case, there are intriguing hints that there may be more satisfactory theories yet to be ...

Problems in additive number theory related to sum and difference sets, more general binary linear forms, and representation functions of additive bases for the integers and nonnegative integers.

We discuss a structural approach to subset-sum problems in additive combinatorics. The core of this approach are Freiman-type structural theorems, many of which will be presented through the paper. These results have applications in various areas, such as number theory, combinatorics and mathematical physics.