Some new results on the higher energies I

Given a set of integers with no three in arithmetic progression, we construct a Stanley sequence by adding integers greedily so that no arithmetic progression is formed. This paper offers two main contributions to the theory of Stanley sequences. First, we characterize well-structured Stanley sequences as solutions to constraints in modular arithmetic, defining the modular Stanley sequences. Second, we introduce the basic Stanley sequences, where elements arise as the sums of...

Let $\mathbb{N}$ denote the set of all nonnegative integers. Let $k\ge 3$ be an integer and $A_{0} = \{a_{1}, \dots{}, a_{t}\}$ $(a_{1} < \ldots< a_{t})$ be a nonnegative set which does not contain an arithmetic progression of length $k$. We denote $A = \{a_{1}, a_{2}, \dots{}\}$ defined by the following greedy algorithm: if $l \ge t$ and $a_{1}, \dots{}, a_{l}$ have already been defined, then $a_{l+1}$ is the smallest integer $a > a_{l}$ such that $\{a_{1}, \dots{}, a_{l}\} ...

We prove new lower bounds on the maximum size of subsets $A\subseteq \{1,\dots,N\}$ or $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n$ not containing three-term arithmetic progressions. In the setting of $\{1,\dots,N\}$, this is the first improvement upon a classical construction of Behrend from 1946 beyond lower-order factors (in particular, it is the first quasipolynomial improvement). In the setting of $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ for a fixed prime $p$ and large $n$, we prove a lower bound of $(cp)^n$ fo...

We provide a short proof of a recent result of Elkin in which large subsets of the integers 1 up to N free of 3-term progressions are constructed.

This paper is mainly concerned with sets which do not contain four-term arithmetic progressions, but are still very rich in three term arithmetic progressions, in the sense that all sufficiently large subsets contain at least one such progression. We prove that there exists a positive constant $c$ and a set $A \subset \mathbb F_q^n$ which does not contain a four-term arithmetic progression, with the property that for every subset $A' \subset A$ with $|A'| \geq |A|^{1-c}$, $A'...

Using the density-increment strategy of Roth and Gowers, we derive Szemeredi's theorem on arithmetic progressions from the inverse conjectures GI(s) for the Gowers norms, recently established by the authors and Ziegler.

There has been much work on the following question: given n how large can a subset of {1,...,n} be that has no arithmetic progressions of length 3. We call such sets 3-free. Most of the work has been asymptotic. In this paper we sketch applications of large 3-free sets, review the literature of how to construct large 3-free sets, and present empirical studies on how large such sets actually are. The two main questions considered are (1) How large can a 3-free set be when n is...

In this paper we introduce the notion of the $P$-sequences and apply their properties in studying representability of real numbers. Another application of $P$-sequences we find in generating the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott pairs.

We continue to study the relationship between the size of the sum of a set and the common energy of its subsets. We find a rather sharp subexponential dependence between the doubling constant of a set $A$ and the minimal common energy taken over all partitions of $A$ into two disjoint subsets. As an application, we give a proof of the well--known arithmetic regularity lemma with better dependence on parameters.

We provide estimates for the dimensions of sets in $\mathbb{R}$ which uniformly avoid finite arithmetic progressions. More precisely, we say $F$ uniformly avoids arithmetic progressions of length $k \geq 3$ if there is an $\epsilon>0$ such that one cannot find an arithmetic progression of length $k$ and gap length $\Delta>0$ inside the $\epsilon \Delta$ neighbourhood of $F$. Our main result is an explicit upper bound for the Assouad (and thus Hausdorff) dimension of such sets...