English

Schur properties of randomly perturbed sets

Combinatorics 2022-05-04 v1 Number Theory

Abstract

A set AA of integers is said to be Schur if any two-colouring of AA results in monochromatic x,yx,y and zz with x+y=zx+y=z. We study the following problem: how many random integers from [n][n] need to be added to some A[n]A\subseteq [n] to ensure with high probability that the resulting set is Schur? Hu showed in 1980 that when A>4n5|A|> \lceil\tfrac{4n}{5}\rceil, no random integers are needed, as AA is already guaranteed to be Schur. Recently, Aigner-Horev and Person showed that for any dense set of integers A[n]A\subseteq [n], adding ω(n1/3)\omega(n^{1/3}) random integers suffices, noting that this is optimal for sets AA with An2|A|\leq \lceil\tfrac{n}{2}\rceil. We close the gap between these two results by showing that if A[n]A\subseteq [n] with A=n2+t<4n5|A|=\lceil\tfrac{n}{2}\rceil+t<\lceil\tfrac{4n}{5}\rceil, then adding ω(min{n1/3,nt1})\omega(\min\{n^{1/3},nt^{-1}\}) random integers will with high probability result in a set that is Schur. Our result is optimal for all tt, and we further provide a stability result showing that one needs far fewer random integers when AA is not close in structure to the extremal examples. We also initiate the study of perturbing sparse sets of integers AA by using algorithmic arguments and the theory of hypergraph containers to provide nontrivial upper and lower bounds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.01456,
  title  = {Schur properties of randomly perturbed sets},
  author = {Shagnik Das and Charlotte Knierim and Patrick Morris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.01456},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

27 pages, 5 figures An extended abstract has appeared in EuroComb2021

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:05:48.552Z