English

Representing Sequence Subsums as Sumsets of Near Equal Sized Sets

Number Theory 2019-10-28 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

For a sequence SS of terms from an abelian group GG of length S|S|, let Σn(S)\Sigma_n(S) denote the set of all elements that can be represented as the sum of terms in some nn-term subsequence of SS. When the subsum set is very small, Σn(S)Sn+1|\Sigma_n(S)|\leq |S|-n+1, it is known that the terms of SS can be partitioned into nn nonempty sets A1,,AnGA_1,\ldots,A_n\subseteq G such that Σn(S)=A1++An\Sigma_n(S)=A_1+\ldots+A_n. Moreover, if the upper bound is strict, then AiZ1|A_i\setminus Z|\leq 1 for all ii, where Z=i=1n(Ai+H)Z=\bigcap_{i=1}^{n}(A_i+H) and H={gG:  g+Σn(S)=Σn(S)}H=\{g\in G:\; g+\Sigma_n(S)=\Sigma_n(S)\} is the stabilizer of Σn(S)\Sigma_n(S). This allows structural results for sumsets to be used to study the subsum set Σn(S)\Sigma_n(S) and is one of the two main ways to derive the natural subsum analog of Kneser's Theorem for sumsets. In this paper, we show that such a partitioning can be achieved with sets AiA_i of as near equal a size as possible, so SnAiSn\lfloor \frac{|S|}{n}\rfloor \leq |A_i|\leq \lceil\frac{|S|}{n}\rceil for all ii, apart from one highly structured counterexample when Σn(S)=Sn+1|\Sigma_n(S)|= |S|-n+1 with n=2n=2. The added information of knowing the sets AiA_i are of near equal size can be of use when applying the aforementioned partitioning result, or when applying sumset results to study Σn(S)\Sigma_n(S). We also give an extension increasing the flexibility of the aforementioned partitioning result and prove some stronger results when n12Sn\geq \frac12|S| is very large.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.11807,
  title  = {Representing Sequence Subsums as Sumsets of Near Equal Sized Sets},
  author = {David J. Grynkiewicz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.11807},
  year   = {2019}
}