Problems in additive number theory, VI: Sizes of sumsets

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

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.

For a positive integer $h$ and a subset $A$ of a given finite abelian group, we let $hA$, $h \hat{\;} A$, and $h_{\pm}A$ denote the $h$-fold sumset, restricted sumset, and signed sumset of $A$, respectively. Here we review some of what is known and not yet known about the minimum sizes of these three types of sumsets, as well as their corresponding critical numbers. In particular, we discuss several new open direct and inverse problems.

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 study extremal problems about sets of integers that do not contain sumsets with summands of prescribed size. We analyse both finite sets and infinite sequences. We also study the connections of these problems with extremal problems of graphs and hypergraphs.

In this paper we discuss some of the key properties of sum-free subsets of abelian groups. Our discussion has been designed with a broader readership in mind, and is hence not overly technical. We consider answers to questions like: how many sum-free subsets are there in a given abelian group $G$? what are its sum-free subsets of maximum cardinality? what is the maximum cardinality of these sum-free subsets? what does a typical sum-free subset of $G$ looks like? among others.

Let $A$ be a finite set of integers and let $hA$ be its $h$-fold sumset. This paper investigates the sequence of sumset sizes $( |hA| )_{h=1}^{\infty}$, the relations between these sequences for affinely inequivalent sets $A$ and $B$, and the comparative growth rates and configurations of the sumset size sequences $( |hA| )_{h=1}^{\infty}$ and $( |hA| )_{h=1}^{\infty}$.

In this note we find the optimal lower bound for the size of the sumsets $HA$ and $H\,\hat{}A$ over finite sets $H, A$ of nonnegative integers, where $HA = \bigcup_{h\in H} hA$ and $H\,\hat{}A = \bigcup_{h\in H} h\,\hat{}A$. We also find the underlying algebraic structure of the sets $A$ and $H$ for which the size of the sumsets $HA$ and $H\,\hat{}A$ is minimum.

In this paper we start to investigate a new body of questions in additive combinatorics. The fundamental Cauchy--Davenport theorem gives a lower bound on the size of a sumset A+B for subsets of the cyclic group Zp of order p (p prime), and this is just one example of a large family of results. Our aim in this paper is to investigate what happens if we restrict the number of elements of one set that we may use to form the sums. Here is the question we set out to answer: given ...

In this talk we introduce several topics in combinatorial number theory which are related to groups; the topics include combinatorial aspects of covers of groups by cosets, and also restricted sumsets and zero-sum problems on abelian groups. A survey of known results and open problems on the topics is given in a popular way.