English

A strengthening of Chang's lemma

Number Theory 2026-05-11 v1 Combinatorics Group Theory

Abstract

We prove a strengthening of Chang's lemma for subsets of Fpn\mathbb F_p^n. The classical conclusion that the large spectrum is contained in a subspace of dimension at most 2ε2log(1/α)2\varepsilon^{-2}\log(1/\alpha) is refined to show that every character outside this subspace has small correlation with the set not only globally, but also on average over the cosets of the orthogonal complement, in a natural cosetwise 1\ell^1 norm. As a consequence, we obtain a localized counting lemma. We also give an extension of the argument to arbitrary finite abelian groups.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.07916,
  title  = {A strengthening of Chang's lemma},
  author = {Gaia Carenini and Leonardo Franchi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.07916},
  year   = {2026}
}

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