Related papers: An Improved Construction of Progression-Free Sets

We prove new lower bounds on the maximum size of subsets $A\subseteq \{1,\dots,N\}$ or $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n$ not containing three-term arithmetic progressions. In the setting of $\{1,\dots,N\}$, this is the first improvement upon a…

In 1946, Behrend gave a construction of dense finite sets of integers that do not contain 3-term arithmetic progressions. In 1961, Rankin generalized Behrend's construction to sets avoiding k-term arithmetic progressions, and in 2008 Elkin…

We construct skew corner-free subsets of $[n]^2$ of size $n^2\exp(-O(\sqrt{\log n}))$, thereby improving on recent bounds of the form $\Omega(n^{5/4})$ obtained by Pohoata and Zakharov. In the other direction, we prove that any such set has…

We construct subsets of {1,...,N} of cardinality at least N exp(-C(log N)^{1/(k+1)}) which do not contain arithmetic progressions of length 2^k+1. This extends a result of Behrend (1946) concerning sets which do not contain aritmetic…

We develop recent ideas of Elsholtz, Proske, and Sauermann to construct denser subsets of $\{1,\dots,N\}$ that lack arithmetic progressions of length $3$. This gives the first quasipolynomial improvement since the original construction of…

We show the existence of a set $S\subset\mathbb{Z}^2$ avoiding collinear triples satisfying $|S\cap [n]^2|=\Omega(n/\sqrt{\log n})$ for sufficiently large $n$. This improves on the best-known lower bound on Erde's extensible…

The problem of looking for subsets of the natural numbers which contain no 3-term arithmetic progressions has a rich history. Roth's theorem famously shows that any such subset cannot have positive upper density. In contrast, Rankin in 1960…

Motivated by applications to matrix multiplication algorithms, Pratt asked (ITCS'24) how large a subset of $[n] \times [n]$ could be without containing a skew-corner: three points $(x,y), (x,y+h),(x+h,y')$ with $h \ne 0$. We prove any skew…

In 1994, Alon construct a triangle-free $(n,d,\lambda)$-graph with $d = \Omega(n^{2/3})$ and $\lambda = O(d^{1/2})$ for an exponentially increasing sequence of integers $n$. Using his ingenious construction, we deduce that there exist…

A set A is square-difference free (henceforth SDF) if there do not exist x,y\in A, x\ne y, such that |x-y| is a square. Let sdf(n) be the size of the largest SDF subset of {1,...,n}. Ruzsa has shown that sdf(n) = \Omega(n^{0.5(1+ \log_{65}…

Assuming the well-known conjecture that [x,x+x^t] contains a prime for t > 0 and x sufficiently large, we prove: For 0 < r < 1, there exists 0 < s < r < 1, 0 < d < 1, and infinitely many primes q such that if S is a subset of Z/qZ having…

We consider the top tree compression scheme introduced by Bille et al. [ICALP 2013] and construct an infinite family of trees on $n$ nodes labeled from an alphabet of size $\sigma$, for which the size of the top DAG is…

We prove new lower bounds on the maximum size of sets $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n$ or $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}_m^n$ not containing three-term arithmetic progressions (consisting of three distinct points). More specifically, we prove that for…

A $k$-configuration is a collection of $k$ distinct integers $x_1,\ldots,x_k$ together with their pairwise arithmetic means $\frac{x_i+x_j}{2}$ for $1 \leq i < j \leq k$. Building on recent work of Filmus, Hatami, Hosseini and Kelman on…

Suppose that $S \subseteq [n]^2$ contains no three points of the form $(x,y), (x,y+\delta), (x+\delta,y')$, where $\delta \neq 0$. How big can $S$ be? Trivially, $n \le |S| \le n^2$. Slight improvements on these bounds are obtained from…

We obtain a new lower bound on the largest Sidon subset of an arbitrary finite set of integers. If $H(n)$ denotes the minimum, over all $n$-element subsets of $\mathbb Z$, of the largest Sidon subset they contain, we prove that $H(n)…

We provide a short proof of a recent result of Elkin in which large subsets of the integers 1 up to N free of 3-term progressions are constructed.

The suffix array and the suffix tree are the two most fundamental data structures for string processing. For a length-$n$ text, however, they use $\Theta(n \log n)$ bits of space, which is often too costly. To address this, Grossi and…

Addressing a question of Cameron and Erd\Ho s, we show that, for infinitely many values of $n$, the number of subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ that do not contain a $k$-term arithmetic progression is at most $2^{O(r_k(n))}$, where $r_k(n)$ is…

Let $s(n)$ be the minimum number of edges in a graph that contains every $n$-vertex tree as a subgraph. Chung and Graham [J. London Math. Soc. 1983] claim to prove that $s(n)\leqslant O(n\log n)$. We point out a mistake in their proof. The…