Cardinalities of $g$-difference sets

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...

Let A be a subset of a finite abelian group G. We say that A is sum-free if there is no solution of the equation x + y = z, with x, y, z belonging to the set A. Let SF(G) denotes the set of all sum-free subets of $G$ and $\sigma(G)$ denotes the number $ n^{-1}(\log_2 |SF(G)|) $. In this article we shall improve the error term in the asymptotic formula of $\sigma(G)$ which was obtained recently by Ben Green and Ruzsa. The methods used are a slight refinement of methods develop...

We show that for every $\varepsilon>0$ there is an absolute constant $c(\varepsilon)>0$ such that the following is true. The union of any $n$ arithmetic progressions, each of length $n$, with pairwise distinct differences must consist of at least $c(\varepsilon)n^{2-\varepsilon}$ elements. We observe, by construction, that one can find $n$ arithmetic progressions, each of length $n$, with pairwise distinct differences such that the cardinality of their union is $o(n^2)$. We r...

Given a positive integer $m$, let $\mathbb{Z}_m$ be the set of residue classes mod $m$. For $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}_m$ and $n\in \mathbb{Z}_m$, let $\sigma_A(n)$ be the number of solutions to the equation $n=x+y$ with $x,y\in A$. Let $\mathcal{H}_m$ be the set of subsets $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}_m$ such that $\sigma_A(n)\geq1$ for all $n\in \mathbb{Z}_m$. Let $$ \ell_m=\min\limits_{A\in \mathcal{H}_m}\left\lbrace m^{-1}\sum_{n\in \mathbb{Z}_m}\sigma_A(n)\right\rbrace. $$ F...

Using a slight modification of an argument of Croot, Ruzsa and Schoen we establish a quantitative result on the existence of a dilated copy of any given configuration of integer points in sparse difference sets. More precisely, given any configuration $\{v_1,...,v_\ell\}$ of vectors in $\mathbb{Z}^d$, we show that if $A\subset[1,N]^d$ with $|A|/N^d\geq C N^{-1/\ell}$, then there necessarily exists $r\ne0$ such that $\{rv_1, ...,rv_\ell\}\subseteq A-A$.

Let $p\geq 3$ be a prime and $n\geq 1$ be an integer. Let $K\subseteq {\mathbb{F}_p}$ denote a fixed subset with $0\in K$. Let $A\subseteq ({\mathbb{F}_p})^n$ be an arbitrary subset such that $$\{ \mathbf{a}-\mathbf{b}:~\mathbf{a},\mathbf{b}\in A,\mathbf{a}\neq \mathbf{b}\}\cap K^n=\emptyset. $$ Then we prove the exponential upper bound $$ |A|\leq ( p-|K|+ 1 )^n. $$ We use in our proof the linear algebra bound method.

Let $q$ be an odd prime power. Combining the discussion of Varnavides and a recent theorem of Ellenberg and Gijswijt, we show that a subset $A\subset{\mathbb F}_q^n$ will contain many non-trivial three-term arithmetic progressions, whenever $|A|\geq (c_q q)^n$ for some constant $c_q>0$. After the first version of our manuscript was uploaded in the arXiv, we learned from Professors Jacob Fox and Terence Tao that our result is a special case of a result of Fox and Lovasz [1, Th...

Let $n$ be an arbitrary integer, let $p$ be a prime factor of $n$. Denote by $\omega_1$ the $p^{th}$ primitive unity root, $\omega_1:=e^{\frac{2\pi i}{p}}$. Define $\omega_i:=\omega_1^i$ for $0\leq i\leq p-1$ and $B:=\{1,\omega_1,...,\omega_{p-1}\}^n$. Denote by $K(n,p)$ the minimum $k$ for which there exist vectors $v_1,...,v_k\in B$ such that for any vector $w\in B$, there is an $i$, $1\leq i\leq k$, such that $v_i\cdot w=0$, where $v\cdot w$ is the usual scalar product of ...

This paper studies the maximal size of product-free sets in Z/nZ. These are sets of residues for which there is no solution to ab == c (mod n) with a,b,c in the set. In a previous paper we constructed an infinite sequence of integers (n_i)_{i > 0} and product-free sets S_i in Z/n_iZ such that the density |S_i|/n_i tends to 1 as i tends to infinity, where |S_i|$ denotes the cardinality of S_i. Here we obtain matching, up to constants, upper and lower bounds on the maximal atta...

We study progression-free sets in the abelian groups $G=(\mathbb{Z}_m^n,+)$. Let $r_k(\mathbb{Z}_m^n)$ denote the maximal size of a set $S \subset \mathbb{Z}_m^n$ that does not contain a proper arithmetic progression of length $k$. We give lower bound constructions, which e.g. include that $r_3(\mathbb{Z}_m^n) \geq C_m \frac{((m+2)/2)^n}{\sqrt{n}}$, when $m$ is even. When $m=4$ this is of order at least $3^n/\sqrt{n}\gg \vert G \vert^{0.7924}$. Moreover, if the progression-fr...