Sumsets and entropy revisited

Let ${\Bbb F}_2$ be the finite field of two elements, ${\Bbb F}_2^n$ be the vector space of dimension $n$ over ${\Bbb F}_2$. For sets $A,\,B\subseteq{\Bbb F}_2^n$, their sumset is defined as the set of all pairwise sums $a+b$ with $a\in A,\,b\in B$. Ben Green and Terence Tao proved that, let $K\geq 1$, if$A,\,B\subseteq{\Bbb F}_2^n$ and $|A+B|\leq K|A|^{1\over 2}|B|^{1\over 2}$, then there exists a subspace $H\subseteq{\Bbb F}_2^n$ with $$ |H|\gg\exp(-O(\sqrt{K}\log K))|A| ...

We prove new results on additive properties of finite sets $A$ with small multiplicative doubling $|AA|\leq M|A|$ in the category of real/complex sets as well as multiplicative subgroups in the prime residue field. The improvements are based on new combinatorial lemmata, which may be of independent interest. Our main results are the inequality $$ |A-A|^3|AA|^5 \gtrsim |A|^{10}, $$ over the reals, "redistributing" the exponents in the textbook Elekes sum-product inequality a...

We introduce a new probabilistic technique for finding 'almost-periods' of convolutions of subsets of groups. This gives results similar to the Bogolyubov-type estimates established by Fourier analysis on abelian groups but without the need for a nice Fourier transform to exist. We also present applications, some of which are new even in the abelian setting. These include a probabilistic proof of Roth's theorem on three-term arithmetic progressions and a proof of a variant of...

We show that if A is a large subset of a box in Z^d with dimensions L_1 >= L_2 >= ... >= L_d which are all reasonably large, then |A + A| > 2^{d/48}|A|. By combining this with Chang's quantitative version of Freiman's theorem, we prove a structural result about sets with small sumset. If A is a set of integers with |A + A| <= K|A|, then there is a progression P of dimension d << log K such that |A \cap P| >= \exp(-K^C)max (|A|, |P|). This is closely related to a theorem of ...

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

We study sum-free sets in sparse random subsets of even order abelian groups. In particular, we determine the sharp threshold for the following property: the largest such set is contained in some maximum-size sum-free subset of the group. This theorem extends recent work of Balogh, Morris and Samotij, who resolved the case G = Z_{2n}, and who obtained a weaker threshold (up to a constant factor) in general.

The study of `structure' on subsets of abelian groups, with small `doubling constant', has been well studied in the last fifty years, from the time Freiman initiated the subject. In \cite{DF} Deshouillers and Freiman establish a structure theorem for subsets of $\n$ with small doubling constant. In the current article we provide an alternate proof of one of the main theorem of \cite{DF}. Also our proof leads to slight improvement of the theorems in \cite{DF}.

Suppose that G is an abelian group, A is a finite subset of G with |A+A|< K|A| and eta in (0,1] is a parameter. Our main result is that there is a set L such that |A cap Span(L)| > K^{-O_eta(1)}|A| and |L| = O(K^eta log |A|). We include an application of this result to a generalisation of the Roth-Meshulam theorem due to Liu and Spencer.

We develop the theory of the additive dimension ${\rm dim} (A)$, i.e. the size of a maximal dissociated subset of a set $A$. It was shown that the additive dimension is closely connected with the growth of higher sumsets $nA$ of our set $A$. We apply this approach to demonstrate that for any small multiplicative subgroup $\Gamma$ the sequence $|n\Gamma|$ grows very fast. Also, we obtain a series of applications to the sum--product phenomenon and to the Balog--Wooley decomposi...

A remarkable theorem due to Khovanskii asserts that for any finite subset $A$ of an abelian group, the cardinality of the $h$-fold sumset $hA$ grows like a polynomial for all sufficiently large $h$. Currently, neither the polynomial nor what sufficiently large means are understood. In this paper we obtain an effective version of Khovanskii's theorem for any $A \subset \mathbb{Z}^d$ whose convex hull is a simplex; previously, such results were only available for $d=1$. Our app...