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Difference bases in cyclic groups

Combinatorics 2021-11-01 v6 Group Theory

Abstract

A subset BB of an Abelian group GG is called a difference basis of GG if each element gGg\in G can be written as the difference g=abg=a-b of some elements a,bBa,b\in B. The smallest cardinality B|B| of a difference basis BGB\subset G is called the difference size of GG and is denoted by Δ[G]\Delta[G]. We prove that for every nNn\in\mathbb N the cyclic group CnC_n of order nn has difference size 1+4n32Δ[Cn]32n\frac{1+\sqrt{4|n|-3}}2\le \Delta[C_n]\le\frac32\sqrt{n}. If n9n\ge 9 (and n21015n\ge 2\cdot 10^{15}), then Δ[Cn]1273n\Delta[C_n]\le\frac{12}{\sqrt{73}}\sqrt{n} (and Δ[Cn]<23n\Delta[C_n]<\frac2{\sqrt{3}}\sqrt{n}). Also we calculate the difference sizes of all cyclic groups of cardinality 100\le 100.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1702.02631,
  title  = {Difference bases in cyclic groups},
  author = {Taras Banakh and Volodymyr Gavrylkiv},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.02631},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

11 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:13:19.497Z