Related papers: Square-Difference-Free Sets of Size Omega(n^{0.733…

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…

Let n be a nonzero integer and assume that a set S of positive integers has the property that xy+n is a perfect square whenever x and y are distinct elements of S. In this paper we find some upper bounds for the size of the set S. We prove…

We prove that for all squarefree $m$ and any set $A\subset\mathbb{Z}_m$ such that $A-A$ does not contain non-zero squares the bound $|A|\leq m^{1/2}(3n)^{1.5n}$ holds, where $n$ denotes the number of odd prime divisors of $m$.

A finite set $A$ of integers is square-sum-free if there is no subset of $A$ sums up to a square. In 1986, Erd\H os posed the problem of determining the largest cardinality of a square-sum-free subset of $\{1, ..., n \}$. Answering this…

A square is a word of the form $xx$ for a non-empty word $x$. Brlek and Li [Comb. Theory, 2025] proved that the number of distinct squares in a word $w$ of length $n$ is at most $n - \sigma$, where $\sigma$ is the number of letters used in…

We prove that the upper bound for the van der Corput property of the set of perfect squares is O((log n)^{-1/3}), giving an answer to a problem considered by Ruzsa and Montgomery. We do it by constructing non-negative valued, normed…

For nonempty subsets $S_0, \dots, S_{n-1}$ of a (large enough) finite field $\mathbb{F}$ satisfying $$|S_1|, \dots, |S_{n-1}| > 2 \quad \mathrm{or} \quad |S_1|,|S_{n-1}| > n - 1,$$ we show that there exist $a_0 \in S_0, \dots, a_{n-1} \in…

Let $\alpha\in \mathbb{R}\setminus\mathbb{Q}$ and $\beta\in \mathbb{R}$ be given. Suppose that $a_1,\ldots,a_s$ are distinct positive integers that do not contain a reduced residue system modulo $p^2$ for any prime $p$. We prove that there…

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…

A collection of $k$ sets is said to form a $k$-sunflower, or $\Delta$-system, if the intersection of any two sets from the collection is the same, and we call a family of sets $\mathcal{F}$ sunflower-free if it contains no sunflowers.…

We consider words $w$ over the alphabet $\Sigma=\{0,1,2\}$. It is shown that there are irreducibly square-free words of all lengths $n$ except 4,5,7 and 12. Such a word is square-free (i.e., it has no repetitions $uu$ as factors), but by…

We show that if $A\subset \{1,\ldots,N\}$ has no solutions to $a-b=n^2$ with $a,b\in A$ and $n\geq 1$ then \[|A|\ll \frac{N}{(\log N)^{c\log\log \log N}}\] for some absolute constant $c>0$. This improves upon a result of…

A set $B$ is said to be \emph{sum-free} if there are no $x,y,z\in B$ with $x+y=z$. We show that there exists a constant $c>0$ such that any set $A$ of $n$ integers contains a sum-free subset $A'$ of size $|A'|\geqslant n/3+c\log \log n$.…

For a property $\Gamma$ and a family of sets $\cF$, let $f(\cF,\Gamma)$ be the size of the largest subfamily of $\cF$ having property $\Gamma$. For a positive integer $m$, let $f(m,\Gamma)$ be the minimum of $f(\cF,\Gamma)$ over all…

Let $F_n$ be a free group of rank $n$, with free generating set $X$. A subset $D$ of $F_n$ is a \emph{Distinct Difference Configuration} if the differences $g^{-1}h$ are distinct, where $g$ and $h$ range over all (ordered) pairs of distinct…

Alon, Shpilka and Umans considered the following version of usual sunflower-free subset: a subset $\mbox{$\cal F$}\subseteq \{1,\ldots ,D\}^n$ for $D>2$ is sunflower-free if for every distinct triple $x,y,z\in \mbox{$\cal F$}$ there exists…

A set of integers is called sum-free if it contains no triple $(x,y,z)$ of not necessarily distinct elements with $x+y=z$. In this paper, we provide a structural characterisation of sum-free subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ of density at least…

For integers $m$ and $n$, we study the problem of finding good lower bounds for the size of progression-free sets in $(\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n},+)$. Let $r_{k}(\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n})$ denote the maximal size of a subset of $\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n}$…

Given $A$ a set of $N$ positive integers, an old question in additive combinatorics asks that whether $A$ contains a sum-free subset of size at least $N/3+\omega(N)$ for some increasing unbounded function $\omega$. The question is generally…

Union-free families of subsets of $[n]=\{1,... n\}$ have been studied in \cite{FF}. In this paper, we provide a complete characterization of maximal {\it symmetric difference}-free families of subsets of $[n]$.