English

A Note on the Alon-Kleitman Argument for Sum-free Subset Theorem

Combinatorics 2017-05-16 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

In 1990, Alon and Kleitman proposed an argument for the sum-free subset problem: every set of n nonzero elements of a finite Abelian group contains a sum-free subset A of size |A|>\frac{2}{7}n. In this note, we show that the argument confused two different randomness. It applies only to the finite Abelian group G = (Z/pZ)^s where p is a prime. For the general case, the problem remains open.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.07823,
  title  = {A Note on the Alon-Kleitman Argument for Sum-free Subset Theorem},
  author = {Zhengjun Cao and Lihua Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.07823},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:33:55.123Z