English

The asymptotic uniform distribution of subset sums

Combinatorics 2025-09-11 v2

Abstract

Let GG be a finite abelian group of order nn, and for each aGa\in G and integer 1hn1\le h\le n let Fa(h)\mathcal{F}_a(h) denote the family of all hh-element subsets of GG whose sum is aa. A problem posed by Katona and Makar-Limanov is to determine whether the minimum and maximum sizes of the families Fa(h)\mathcal{F}_a(h) (as aa ranges over GG) become asymptotically equal as nn\rightarrow \infty when h=n2h=\left\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\right\rfloor. We affirmatively answer this question and in fact show that the same asymptotic equality holds for every 4hn2+14\leq h\leq \left\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\right\rfloor+1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.12319,
  title  = {The asymptotic uniform distribution of subset sums},
  author = {Jing Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.12319},
  year   = {2025}
}