English

On Bass' conjecture of the small Davenport constant

Combinatorics 2025-02-20 v1 Number Theory

Abstract

Let GG be a finite group. The small Davenport constant d(G)\mathsf d(G) of GG is the maximal integer \ell such that there is a sequence of length \ell over GG which has no nonempty product-one subsequence. In 2007, Bass conjectured that d(Gm,n)=m+n2\mathsf d(G_{m,n})=m+n-2, where Gm,n=x,yxm=yn=1,x1yx=ysG_{m,n}=\langle x, y| x^m=y^n=1, x^{-1}yx=y^s\rangle, and ss has order mm modulo nn. In this paper, we confirm the conjecture for any group Gm,nG_{m,n} with additional conditions that ss has order mm modulo qq, for every prime divisor qq of nn. Moreover, we solve the associated inverse problem characterizing the structure of any product-one free sequence with extremal length d(Gm,n)\mathsf d(G_{m,n}). Our results generalize some obtained theorems on this problem.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.13409,
  title  = {On Bass' conjecture of the small Davenport constant},
  author = {Guoqing Wang and Yang Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.13409},
  year   = {2025}
}

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18 pages