English

Finitely additive measures on $\mathbb Z$ and additive combinatorics

Logic 2026-07-29 v1 Combinatorics Functional Analysis

Abstract

We study (bounded) finitely additive measures on the group of integers Z\mathbb Z, as elements of the Banach algebra ba(Z)\mathrm{ba}(\mathbb Z), viewed as a natural generalization of ultrafilters. The algebraic structure of ba(Z)\mathrm{ba}(\mathbb Z) extends the semigroup structure of the \v{C}ech--Stone compactification, allowing methods from ultrafilter theory to be applied in a broader measure-theoretic setting. We investigate idempotent finitely additive measures and establish additive properties of subsets of Z\mathbb Z having positive measure. We then proceed to study almost translation-invariant and translation-invariant finitely additive measures, showing that these stronger notions yield correspondingly stronger additive conclusions. In particular, we prove that every subset of Z\mathbb Z whose measure exceeds a certain explicit threshold necessarily is an IPn\mathsf{IP}_{n}-set; with stronger properties and lower thresholds depending on the properties of the relevant measures. Several examples illustrating the sharpness and limitations of the results are also presented, together with a discussion of open problems and directions for future research.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.26522,
  title  = {Finitely additive measures on $\mathbb Z$ and additive combinatorics},
  author = {Zeinab Ashtab and David Fernández-Bretón},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.26522},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages