Related papers: Difference sets and the primes

Motivated by expansion in Cayley graphs, we show that there exist infinitely many groups $G$ with a nontrivial irreducible unitary representation whose average over every set of $o(\log\log|G|)$ elements of $G$ has operator norm $1 - o(1)$.…

A set of integers greater than 1 is primitive if no member in the set divides another. Erd\H{o}s proved in 1935 that the series $f(A) = \sum_{a\in A}1/(a \log a)$ is uniformly bounded over all choices of primitive sets $A$. In 1986 he asked…

We prove that any finite set of real numbers can be split into two parts, one part being highly non-additive and the other highly non-multiplicative.

For any positive integer $k$, we show that infinitely often, perfect $k$-th powers appear inside very long gaps between consecutive prime numbers, that is, gaps of size $$ c_k \frac{\log p \log_2 p \log_4 p}{(\log_3 p)^2}, $$ where $p$ is…

Answering a question of P. Erdos from 1965, we show that for every eps>0 there is a set A of n integers with the following property: every subset A' of A with at least (1/3 + eps)n elements contains three distinct elements x,y,z with x + y…

Let n be a positive odd integer and let p>n+1 be a prime. We mainly derive the following congruence: $$\sum_{0<i_1<...<i_n<p}(i_1/3)(-1)^{i_1}/(i_1...i_n)=0 (mod p).$$

Let $\omega(n)$ denote the number of distinct prime factors of $n$. Then for any given $K\geq 2$, small $\epsilon>0$ and sufficiently large (only depending on $K$ and $\epsilon$) $x$, there exist at least $x^{1-\epsilon}$ integers…

Let $\omega^*(n) = \{d|n: d=p-1, \mbox{$p$ is a prime}\}$. We show that, for each integer $k\geq2$, $$ \sum_{n\leq x}\omega^*(n)^k \asymp x(\log x)^{2^k-k-1}, $$ where the implied constant may depend on $k$ only. This confirms a recent…

We show that if a subset A of {1,...,N} does not contain any solutions to the equation x+y+z=3w with the variables not all equal, then A has size at most exp(-c(log N)^{1/7}) N, where c > 0 is some absolute constant. In view of Behrend's…

We prove a lemma that is useful to get upper bounds for the number of partitions without a given subsum. From this we can deduce an improved upper bound for the number of sets represented by the (unrestricted or into unequal parts)…

Let $v$ be a product of at most three not necessarily distinct primes. We prove that there exists no strong external difference family with more than two subsets in abelian group $G$ of order $v$, except possibly when $G=C_p^3$ and $p$ is a…

We obtain a first non-trivial estimate for the sum of dilates problem in the case of groups of prime order, by showing that if $t$ is an integer different from $0, 1$ or -1 and if $\A \subset \Zp$ is not too large (with respect to $p$),…

We prove that a subset $A\subseteq [1, N]$ with \[\sum_{n\in A}\frac{1}{n} \ge (\log N)^{4/5 + o(1)}\] contains a subset $B$ such that \[\sum_{n\in B} \frac{1}{n} = 1.\] Our techniques refine those of Croot and of Bloom. Using our…

Let $k\geq 2$ be a fixed natural number. We establish the existence of infinitely many pairs of consecutive primes $p_n$, $p_{n+1}$ satisfying $$ p_{n+1}-p_n\geq c\:\frac{\log p_n\: \log_2 p_n\: \log_4 p_n}{\log_3 p_n}\:,$$ with $c$ being a…

Let $q$ be a prime. We give an elementary proof of the fact that for any $k\in\mathbb{N}$, the proportion of $k$-element subsets of $\mathbb{Z}$ that contain a $q^{th}$ power modulo almost every prime, is zero. This result holds regardless…

Let F be a family of subsets of an n-element set not containing four distinct members such that A union B is contained in C intersect D. It is proved that the maximum size of F under this condition is equal to the sum of the two largest…

Let $N$ be an odd perfect number and let $a$ be its third largest prime divisor, $b$ be the second largest prime divisor, and $c$ be its largest prime divisor. We discuss steps towards obtaining a non-trivial upper bound on $a$, as well as…

We show that if {1, b, c, d} is a D(-1) diophantine quadruple with b<c<d and c=1+s^2, then the cases s=p^k, s=2p^k, c=p and c=2p^k do not occur, where p is an odd prime and k is a positive integer. For the integer d=1+x^2, we show that it…

We investigate the behavior of the sum and difference sets of $A \subseteq \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ chosen independently and randomly according to a binomial parameter $p(n) = o(1)$. We show that for rapidly decaying $p(n)$, $A$ is almost…

We establish completely log-free bounds for exponential sums over the primes and the M\"{o}bius function. Let $0<\eta \leq 1/10$, and suppose $\alpha = a/q + \delta/x$, with $(a,q)=1$ and $|\delta| \leq x^{1/5 + \eta}/q$, and set $\delta_0…