English

Finding Certain Arithmetic Progressions in 2-Coloured Cyclic Groups

Combinatorics 2018-06-26 v1

Abstract

We say a pair of integers (a,b)(a, b) is findable if the following is true. For any δ>0\delta > 0 there exists a p0p_0 such that for any prime pp0p \ge p_0 and any red-blue colouring of Z/pZ\mathbb{Z} /p\mathbb{Z} in which each colour has density at least δ\delta, we can find an arithmetic progression of length a+ba+b inside Z/pZ\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z} whose first aa elements are red and whose last bb elements are blue. Szemer\'edi's Theorem on arithmetic progressions implies that (0,k)(0,k) and (1,k)(1,k) are findable for any kk. We prove that (2,k)(2, k) is also findable for any kk. However, the same is not true of (3,k)(3, k). Indeed, we give a construction showing that (3,30000)(3, 30000) is not findable. We also show that (14,14)(14, 14) is not findable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1806.08849,
  title  = {Finding Certain Arithmetic Progressions in 2-Coloured Cyclic Groups},
  author = {Matei Mandache},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.08849},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

20 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:39:00.440Z