An application of graph pebbling to zero-sum sequences in abelian groups

For a finite abelian group $G$ and a positive integer $k$, let $s_{k}(G)$ denote the smallest integer $\ell\in\mathbb{N}$ such that any sequence $S$ of elements of $G$ of length $|S|\geq\ell$ has a zero-sum subsequence with length $k$. The celebrated Erd\H{o}s-Ginzburg-Ziv theorem determines $s_{n}(C_{n})=2n-1$ for cyclic groups $C_{n}$, while Reiher showed in 2007 that $s_{n}(C_{n}^{2})=4n-3$. In this paper we prove for a $p$-group $G$ with exponent $\exp(G)=q$ the upper bou...

A sequence in an additively written abelian group is called zero-free if each of its nonempty subsequences has sum different from the zero element of the group. The article determines the structure of the zero-free sequences with lengths greater than $n/2$ in the additive group $\Zn/$ of integers modulo $n$. The main result states that for each zero-free sequence $(a_i)_{i=1}^\ell$ of length $\ell>n/2$ in $\Zn/$ there is an integer $g$ coprime to $n$ such that if $\bar{ga_i}$...

Let $\overrightarrow{G}$ be a directed graph with no component of orderless than~$3$, and let $\Gamma$ be a finite Abelian group such that $|\Gamma|\geq 4|V(\overrightarrow{G})|$ or if $|V(\overrightarrow{G})|$ is large enough with respect to an arbitrarily fixed $\varepsilon>0$ then $|\Gamma|\geq (1+\varepsilon)|V(\overrightarrow{G})|$. We show that there exists an injective mapping $\varphi$ from $V(\overrightarrow{G})$ to the group $\Gamma$ such that $\sum_{x\in V(C)}\...

A labeling of the vertices of a graph by elements of any abelian group $A$ induces a labeling of the edges by summing the labels of their endpoints. Hovey defined the graph $G$ to be $A$-cordial if it has such a labeling where the vertex labels and the edge labels are both evenly-distributed over $A$ in a technical sense. His conjecture that all trees $T$ are $A$-cordial for all cyclic groups $A$ remains wide open, despite significant attention. Curiously, there has been very...

In this article we discuss the question of presence of Hamiltonian cycle in the un-directed power graph of a group. In the process we develop weighted Hamiltonian cycle concept and prove a few general results regarding the Hamiltonian question.

Let $G$ be an additive abelian group and $S\subset G$ a subset. Let $\Sigma(S)$ denote the set of group elements which can be expressed as a sum of a nonempty subset of $S$. We say $S$ is zero-sum free if $0 \not\in \Sigma(S)$. It was conjectured by R.B.~Eggleton and P.~Erd\"{o}s in 1972 and proved by W.~Gao et. al. in 2008 that $|\Sigma(S)|\geq 19$ provided that $S$ is a zero-sum free subset of an abelian group $G$ with $|S|=6$. In this paper, we determined the structure of ...

Let $G$ be a finite abelian group and $A$ be a subset of $G$. We say that $A$ is complete if every element of $G$ can be represented as a sum of different elements of $A$. In this paper, we study the following question: {\it What is the structure of a large incomplete set ?} The typical answer is that such a set is essentially contained in a maximal subgroup. As a by-product, we obtain a new proof for several earlier results.

In this paper, we present a reciprocity on finite abelian groups involving zero-sum sequences. Let $G$ and $H$ be finite abelian groups with $(|G|,|H|)=1$. For any positive integer $m$, let $\mathsf M(G,m)$ denote the set of all zero-sum sequences over $G$ of length $m$. We have the following reciprocity $$|\mathsf M(G,|H|)|=|\mathsf M(H,|G|)|.$$ Moreover, we provide a combinatorial interpretation of the above reciprocity using ideas from rational Catalan combinatorics. We al...

Let $G$ be a finite abelian group. Let $g(G)$ be the smallest positive integer $t$ such that every subset of cardinality $t$ of the group $G$ contains a subset of cardinality $\mathrm{exp}(G)$ whose sum is zero. In this paper, we show that if X is a subset of $\mathbb{Z}^2_{2n}$ with cardinality $4n+1$ and $2n$ or $2n-1$ elements of $X$ have the same first coordintes, then $X$ contains a zero sum subset. As an application of our results we prove that $g(\mathbb{Z}^2_6) = 13.$...

A subset of an abelian group is {\em sequenceable} if there is an ordering $(x_1, \ldots, x_k)$ of its elements such that the partial sums $(y_0, y_1, \ldots, y_k)$, given by $y_0 = 0$ and $y_i = \sum_{j=1}^i x_i$ for $1 \leq i \leq k$, are distinct, with the possible exception that we may have $y_k = y_0 = 0$. We demonstrate the sequenceability of subsets of size $k$ of $\mathbb{Z}_n \setminus \{ 0 \}$ when $n = mt$ in many cases, including when $m$ is either prime or has al...