English

Generalizing the Distribution of Missing Sums in Sumsets

Number Theory 2021-08-10 v2 Probability

Abstract

Given a finite set of integers AA, its sumset is A+A:={ai+ajai,ajA}A+A:= \{a_i+a_j \mid a_i,a_j\in A\}. We examine A+A|A+A| as a random variable, where AIn=[0,n1]A\subset I_n = [0,n-1], the set of integers from 0 to n1n-1, so that each element of InI_n is in AA with a fixed probability p(0,1)p \in (0,1). Recently, Martin and O'Bryant studied the case in which p=1/2p=1/2 and found a closed form for E[A+A]\mathbb{E}[|A+A|]. Lazarev, Miller, and O'Bryant extended the result to find a numerical estimate for Var(A+A)\text{Var}(|A+A|) and bounds on the number of missing sums in A+AA+A, mn;p(k):=P(2n1A+A=k)m_{n\,;\,p}(k) := \mathbb{P}(2n-1-|A+A|=k). Their primary tool was a graph-theoretic framework which we now generalize to provide a closed form for E[A+A]\mathbb{E}[|A+A|] and Var(A+A)\text{Var}(|A+A|) for all p(0,1)p\in (0,1) and establish good bounds for E[A+A]\mathbb{E}[|A+A|] and mn;p(k)m_{n\,;\,p}(k). We continue to investigate mn;p(k)m_{n\,;\,p}(k) by studying mp(k)=limnmn;p(k)m_p(k) = \lim_{n\to\infty}m_{n\,;\,p}(k), proven to exist by Zhao. Lazarev, Miller, and O'Bryant proved that, for p=1/2p=1/2, m1/2(6)>m1/2(7)<m1/2(8)m_{1/2}(6)>m_{1/2}(7)<m_{1/2}(8). This distribution is not unimodal, and is said to have a "divot" at 7. We report results investigating this divot as pp varies, and through both theoretical and numerical analysis, prove that for p0.68p\geq 0.68 there is a divot at 11; that is, mp(0)>mp(1)<mp(2)m_{p}(0)>m_{p}(1)<m_{p}(2). Finally, we extend the graph-theoretic framework originally introduced by Lazarev, Miller, and O'Bryant to correlated sumsets A+BA+B where BB is correlated to AA by the probabilities P(iBiA)=p1\mathbb{P}(i\in B \mid i\in A) = p_1 and P(iBi∉A)=p2\mathbb{P}(i\in B \mid i\not\in A) = p_2. We provide some preliminary results using the extension of this framework.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.07981,
  title  = {Generalizing the Distribution of Missing Sums in Sumsets},
  author = {Hung V. Chu and Dylan King and Noah Luntzlara and Thomas C. Martinez and Steven J. Miller and Lily Shao and Chenyang Sun and Victor Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.07981},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Version 1.0, 35 pages, 14 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:35:33.336Z