Towards $3n-4$ in groups of prime order

Improving upon the results of Freiman and Candela-Serra-Spiegel, we show that for a non-empty subset $A\subseteq\mathbb F_p$ with $p$ prime and $|A|<0.0045p$, (i) if $|A+A|<2.59|A|-3$ and $|A|>100$, then $A$ is contained in an arithmetic progression of size $|A+A|-|A|+1$, and (ii) if $|A-A|<2.6|A|-3$, then $A$ is contained in an arithmetic progression of size $|A-A|-|A|+1$. The improvement comes from using the properties of higher energies.

Improving upon earlier results of Freiman and the present authors, we show that if $p$ is a sufficiently large prime and $A$ is a sum-free subset of the group of order $p$, such that $n:=|A|>0.318p$, then $A$ is contained in a dilation of the interval $[n,p-n]\pmod p$.

We show that if a finite, large enough subset A of an arbitrary abelian group satisfies the small doubling condition |A + A| < (log |A|)^{1 - epsilon} |A|, then A must contain a three-term arithmetic progression whose terms are not all equal, and A + A must contain an arithmetic progression or a coset of a subgroup, either of which of size at least exp^[ c (log |A|)^{delta} ]. This extends analogous results obtained by Sanders and, respectively, by Croot, Laba and Sisask in t...

Suppose that $A$ is a finite, nonempty subset of a cyclic group of either infinite or prime order. We show that if the difference set $A-A$ is ``not too large'', then there is a nonzero group element with at least as many as $(2+o(1))|A|^2/|A-A|$ representations as a difference of two elements of $A$; that is, the second largest number of representations is, essentially, twice the average. Here the coefficient $2$ is the best possible. We also prove continuous and multidime...

We show that if A is a subset of {1,...,N} containing no non-trivial three-term arithmetic progressions then |A|=O(N/ log^{3/4-o(1)} N).

The $3k-4$ Theorem asserts that, if $A,\,B\subseteq \mathbb Z$ are finite, nonempty subsets with $|A|\geq |B|$ and $|A+B|=|A|+|B|+r< |A|+2|B|-3$, then there are arithmetic progressions $P_A$ and $P_B$ of common difference with $X\subseteq P_X$ with $|P_X|\leq |X|+r+1$ for all $X\in \{A,B\}$. There is much progress extending this result to $\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z$ with $p\geq 2$ prime. Here we begin by showing that, if $A,\,B\subseteq G=\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z$ are nonempty with $|...

We prove, in particular, that if A,G are two arbitrary multiplicative subgroups of the prime field f_p, |G| < p^{3/4} such that the difference A-A is contained in G then |A| \ll |\G|^{1/3+o(1)}. Also, we obtain that for any eps>0 and a sufficiently large subgroup G with |G| \ll p^{1/2-eps} there is no representation G as G = A+B, where A is another subgroup, and B is an arbitrary set, |A|,|B|>1. Finally, we study the number of collinear triples containing in a set of f_p and ...

In this paper, we describe the structure of finite groups whose element orders or proper (abelian) subgroup orders form an arithmetic progression of ratio $r\geq 2$. This extends the case $r=1$ studied in previous papers \cite{1,8,4}.

We prove that there is an absolute constant $c>0$ with the following property: if $Z/pZ$ denotes the group of prime order $p$, and a subset $A\subset Z/pZ$ satisfies $1<|A|<p/2$, then for any positive integer $m<\min\{c|A|/\ln|A|,\sqrt{p/8}\}$ there are at most $2m$ non-zero elements $b\in Z/pZ$ with $|(A+b)\setminus A|\le m$. This (partially) extends onto prime-order groups the result, established earlier by S. Konyagin and the present author for the group of integers. We ...

We give a comprehensive description of the sets $A$ in finite cyclic groups such that $|2A|<\frac94|A|$; namely, we show that any set with this property is densely contained in a (one-dimensional) coset progression. This improves earlier results of Deshouillers-Freiman and Balasubramanian-Pandey.