English

Kneser's theorem for codes and $\ell$-divisible set families

Combinatorics 2025-04-29 v1

Abstract

A kk-wise \ell-divisible set family is a collection F\mathcal{F} of subsets of {1,,n}{ \{1,\ldots,n \} } such that any intersection of kk sets in F\mathcal{F} has cardinality divisible by \ell. If k==2k=\ell=2, it is well-known that F2n/2|\mathcal{F}|\leq 2^{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor}. We generalise this by proving that F2n/p|\mathcal{F}|\leq 2^{\lfloor n/p\rfloor} if k==pk=\ell=p, for any prime number pp. For arbitrary values of \ell, we prove that 424\ell^2-wise \ell-divisible set families F\mathcal{F} satisfy F2n/|\mathcal{F}|\leq 2^{\lfloor n/\ell\rfloor} and that the only families achieving the upper bound are atomic, meaning that they consist of all the unions of disjoint subsets of size \ell. This improves upon a recent result by Gishboliner, Sudakov and Timon, that arrived at the same conclusion for kk-wise \ell-divisible families, with values of kk that behave exponentially in \ell. Our techniques rely heavily upon a coding-theory analogue of Kneser's Theorem from additive combinatorics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.19304,
  title  = {Kneser's theorem for codes and $\ell$-divisible set families},
  author = {Chenying Lin and Gilles Zémor},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.19304},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages