English

On Graham's rearrangement conjecture over $\mathbb{F}_2^n$

Combinatorics 2025-08-26 v1 Group Theory Number Theory

Abstract

A sequence s1,s2,,sks_1,s_2,\ldots, s_k of elements of a group GG is called a valid ordering if the partial products s1,s1s2,,s1sks_1, s_1 s_2, \ldots, s_1\cdots s_k are all distinct. A long-standing problem in combinatorial group theory asks whether, for a given group GG, every subset SG{id}S \subseteq G\setminus \{\mathrm{id}\} admits a valid ordering; the instance of the additive group Fp\mathbb{F}_p is the content of a well-known 1971 conjecture of Graham. Most partial progress to date has concerned the edge cases where either SS or GSG \setminus S is quite small. Our main result is an essentially complete resolution of the problem for G=F2nG=\mathbb{F}_2^n: we show that there is an absolute constant C>0C>0 such that every subset SF2n{0}S\subseteq \mathbb{F}_2^n \setminus \{0\} of size at least CC admits a valid ordering. Our proof combines techniques from additive and probabilistic combinatorics, including the Freiman--Ruzsa theorem and the absorption method. Along the way, we also solve the general problem for moderately large subsets: there is a constant c>0c>0 such that for every group GG (not necessarily abelian), every subset SG{id}S \subseteq G\setminus \{\mathrm{id}\} of size at least G1c|G|^{1-c} admits a valid ordering. Previous work in this direction concerned only sets of size at least (1o(1))G(1-o(1))|G|. A main ingredient in our proof is a structural result, similar in spirit to the Arithmetic Regularity Lemma, showing that every Cayley graph can be efficiently decomposed into mildly quasirandom components.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.18254,
  title  = {On Graham's rearrangement conjecture over $\mathbb{F}_2^n$},
  author = {Benjamin Bedert and Matija Bucić and Noah Kravitz and Richard Montgomery and Alp Müyesser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.18254},
  year   = {2025}
}

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40 pages