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 , the shifted set 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 . Our results substantially sharpen previous theorems of Shkredov and the authors.
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