English

Sarkozy's Theorem for P-Intersective Polynomials

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2015-02-03 v5 Combinatorics Number Theory

Abstract

We define a necessary and sufficient condition on a polynomial hZ[x]h\in \mathbb{Z}[x] to guarantee that every set of natural numbers of positive upper density contains a nonzero difference of the form h(p)h(p) for some prime pp. Moreover, we establish a quantitative estimate on the size of the largest subset of 1,2,,N{1,2,\dots,N} which lacks the desired arithmetic structure, showing that if deg(h)=k(h)=k, then the density of such a set is at most a constant times (logN)c(\log N)^{-c} for any c<1/(2k2)c<1/(2k-2). We also discuss how an improved version of this result for k=2k=2 and a relative version in the primes can be obtained with some additional known methods.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1111.6559,
  title  = {Sarkozy's Theorem for P-Intersective Polynomials},
  author = {Alex Rice},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1111.6559},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Error in statement of Lemma 9 corrected, revision of published version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:42:44.727Z