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Difference bases in dihedral groups

Combinatorics 2021-11-01 v2 Group Theory

Abstract

A subset BB of a group GG is called a difference basis of GG if each element gGg\in G can be written as the difference g=ab1g=ab^{-1} 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]. The fraction ð[G]:=Δ[G]/G\eth[G]:=\Delta[G]/{\sqrt{|G|}} is called the difference characteristic of GG. We prove that for every nNn\in\mathbb N the dihedral group D2nD_{2n} of order 2n2n has the difference characteristic 2ð[D2n]485861.983\sqrt{2}\le\eth[D_{2n}]\leq\frac{48}{\sqrt{586}}\approx1.983. Moreover, if n21015n\ge 2\cdot 10^{15}, then ð[D2n]<461.633\eth[D_{2n}]<\frac{4}{\sqrt{6}}\approx1.633. Also we calculate the difference sizes and characteristics of all dihedral groups of cardinality 80\le80.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1704.02472,
  title  = {Difference bases in dihedral groups},
  author = {Taras Banakh and Volodymyr Gavrylkiv},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.02472},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

5 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:11:44.210Z