English

Multiplicative irreducibility of shifted multiplicative subgroups

Combinatorics 2026-03-16 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

In a recent breakthrough, Kalmynin resolved conjectures of Lev--Sonn and S\'{a}rk\"{o}zy on additive decompositions of multiplicative subgroups of prime fields. In this paper, inspired by a related conjecture of S\'{a}rk\"{o}zy, we prove multiplicative analogues of Kalmynin's results. We show that for every proper multiplicative subgroup GG, the shifted set (G1){0}(G-1)\setminus\{0\} cannot be written as a product set nontrivially, addressing a conjecture of S\'{a}rk\"{o}zy. In addition, we prove that no nonzero shift of any coset of a proper multiplicative subgroup is a ratio set of the form A/AA/A. Our results substantially sharpen previous theorems of Shkredov and the authors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.20919,
  title  = {Multiplicative irreducibility of shifted multiplicative subgroups},
  author = {Seoyoung Kim and Chi Hoi Yip and Semin Yoo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20919},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

22pages, title updated. This version contains substantially stronger results

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:49:55.633Z