Large sumsets from small subsets

Let $A$ be a multiplicative subgroup of $\mathbb Z_p^*$. Define the $k$-fold sumset of $A$ to be $kA=\{x_1+\dots+x_k:x_i \in A,1\leq i\leq k\}$. We show that $6A\supseteq \mathbb Z_p^*$ for $|A| > p^{\frac {11}{23} +\epsilon}$. In addition, we extend a result of Shkredov to show that $|2A|\gg |A|^{\frac 85-\epsilon}$ for $|A|\ll p^{\frac 59}$.

The Cauchy-Davenport theorem states that for any two nonempty subsets A and B of Z/pZ we have |A+B| >= min{p,|A|+|B|-1}, where A+B:={a+b (mod p) | a in A, b in B}. We generalize this result from Z/pZ to arbitrary finite (including non-abelian) groups. This result from early in 2006 is independent of Gyula Karolyi's 2005 result.

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.

Let $\mathbb{F}_p$ be the field of a prime order $p.$ It is known that for any integer $N\in [1,p]$ one can construct a subset $A\subset\mathbb{F}_p$ with $|A|= N$ such that $$ \max\{|A+A|, |AA|\}\ll p^{1/2}|A|^{1/2}. $$ In the present paper we prove that if $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p$ with $|A|>p^{2/3},$ then $$ \max\{|A+A|, |AA|\}\gg p^{1/2}|A|^{1/2}. $$

Let $p$ a large enough prime number. When $A$ is a subset of $\mathbb{F}_p\smallsetminus\{0\}$ of cardinality $|A|> (p+1)/3$, then an application of Cauchy-Davenport Theorem gives $\mathbb{F}_p\smallsetminus\{0\}\subset A(A+A)$. In this note, we improve on this and we show that if $|A|\ge 0.3051 p$ implies $A(A+A)\supseteq\mathbb{F}_p\smallsetminus\{0\}$. In the opposite direction we show that there exists a set $A$ such that $|A| > (1/8+o(1))p$ and $\mathbb{F}_p\smallsetminu...

A family $\mathcal{F}\subset 2^G$ of subsets of an abelian group $G$ is a Sidon system if the sumsets $A+B$ with $A,B\in \mathcal{F}$ are pairwise distinct. Cilleruelo, Serra and the author previously proved that the maximum size $F_k(n)$ of a Sidon system consisting of $k$-subsets of the first $n$ positive integers satisfies $C_k n^{k-1}\leq F_k(n) \leq \binom{n-1}{k-1}+n-k$ for some constant $C_k$ only depending on $k$. We close the gap by proving an essentially tight struc...

Let $h$ be a positive integer and $A, B_1, B_2,\dots, B_h$ be finite sets in a commutative group. We bound $|A+B_1+...+B_h|$ from above in terms of $|A|, |A+B_1|,\dots,|A+B_h|$ and $h$. Extremal examples, which demonstrate that the bound is asymptotically sharp in all the parameters, are furthermore provided.

In this article, we use the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz to give new proofs of the Cauchy-Davenport, the Dias da Silva-Hamidoune and to generalize a previous addition theorem of the author. Precisely, this last result proves that for a set A $\subset$ Fp such that A $\cap$ (--A) = $\emptyset$ the cardinality of the set of subsums of at least $\alpha$ pairwise distinct elements of A is: |$\Sigma$$\alpha$(A)| $\ge$ min (p, |A|(|A| + 1)/2 -- $\alpha$($\alpha$ + 1)/2 + 1) , the ...

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...

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 $$ \max\{|A+A|, |AA|\}\gg \frac{|A|^{15/14}}{(\log|A|)^{2/7}} . $$