English

A stronger connection between the Erd\H{o}s-Burgess and Davenport constants

Combinatorics 2018-08-21 v1

Abstract

The Erd\H{o}s-Burgess constant of a semigroup SS is the smallest positive integer kk such that any sequence over SS of length kk contains a nonempty subsequence whose elements multiply to an idempotent element of SS. In the case where SS is the multiplicative semigroup of Z/nZ\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}, we confirm a conjecture connecting the Erd\H{o}s-Burgess constant of SS and the Davenport constant of (Z/nZ)×(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^{\times} for nn with at most two prime factors. We also discuss the extension of our techniques to other rings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.06031,
  title  = {A stronger connection between the Erd\H{o}s-Burgess and Davenport constants},
  author = {Noah Kravitz and Ashwin Sah},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.06031},
  year   = {2018}
}