Related papers: Thick subsets that do not contain arithmetic progr…
Let $\mathcal{A}$ denote a finite set of arithmetic progressions of positive integers and let $s \geq 2$ be an integer. If the cardinality of $\mathcal{A}$ is at least 2 and $U$ is the union formed by taking certain arithmetic progressions…
The term "strong approximation" is used to describe phenomena where an arithmetic group as well as all of its Zariski dense subgroups have a large image in the congruence quotients. We exhibit analogues of such phenomena in a probabilistic,…
Let $E\subset \mathbb Z$ be a set of positive upper density. Suppose that $P_1,P_2,..., P_k\in \mathbb Z[X]$ are polynomials having zero constant terms. We show that the set $E\cap (E-P_1(p-1))\cap ... \cap (E-P_k(p-1))$ is non-empty for…
A simplified version of the theory of strongly regular graphs is developed for the case in which the graphs have no triangles. This leads to (i) direct proofs of the Krein conditions, and (ii) the characterization of strongly regular graphs…
Let P denote the set of all primes. Suppose that P_1, P_2, P_3 are three subsets of P with the sum of their lower densities relative to P is greater than 2. We prove that for sufficiently large odd integer n, there exist p_i\in P_i such…
We study extremal problems about sets of integers that do not contain sumsets with summands of prescribed size. We analyse both finite sets and infinite sequences. We also study the connections of these problems with extremal problems of…
Fix a prime $p\geq 11$. We show that there exists a positive integer $m$ such that any subset of $\mathbb{F}_p^n\times\mathbb{F}_p^n$ containing no nontrivial configurations of the form $(x,y),(x,y+z),(x,y+2z),(x+z,y)$ must have density…
Linek's 1989 problem asks whether the numbers of independent sets of trees avoid infinitely many positive integers. We show that the set of natural numbers realized as the number of independent sets of a tree has a lower growth exponent of…
We prove that for any function $f$ satisfying certain mild conditions and any Cantor set $K$ with Newhouse thickness greater than $1$, there exists $x\in K$ and $t>0$ such that \[ \{x-t,x,x+f(t)\}\subset K. \] This is an extension of…
Bourgain and Chang recently showed that any subset of $\mathbb{F}_p$ of density $\gg p^{-1/15}$ contains a nontrivial progression $x,x+y,x+y^2$. We answer a question of theirs by proving that if $P_1,P_2\in\mathbb{Z}[y]$ are linearly…
We thoroughly explore the class of k-step nilpotent Lie algebras associated with a simple graph looking for k-step nilpotent Lie algebras which are rigid in the variety of at most k-step nilpotent Lie algebras. We find out that, besides the…
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 consider a certain variation of the 'isoperimetric problem' adopted for subsets of nonnegative integers. More specifically, we explore the sequence P(n) as described in OEIS A186053. We provide the first exact formulas for P(n) including…
In its usual form, Freiman's 3k-4 theorem states that if A and B are subsets of the integers of size k with small sumset (of size close to 2k) then they are very close to arithmetic progressions. Our aim in this paper is to strengthen this…
We study the relationships between three different classes of sequences (or sets) of integers, namely rigidity sequences, Kazhdan sequences (or sets) and nullpotent sequences. We prove that rigidity sequences are non-Kazhdan and nullpotent,…
For k>=3 let A \subset [1,N] be a set not containing a solution to a_1 x_1+...+a_k x_k=a_1 x_{k+1}+...+a_k x_{2k} in distinct integers. We prove that there is an epsilon>0 depending on the coefficients of the equation such that every such A…
Given a connected graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and a positive integer $k\le n$, a subgraph of $G$ on $k$ vertices is called a $k$-subgraph in $G$. We design combinatorial approximation algorithms for finding a connected $k$-subgraph in $G$…
A coarse description of a subset A of omega is a subset D of omega such that the symmetric difference of A and D has asymptotic density 0. We study the extent to which noncomputable information can be effectively recovered from all coarse…
We consider the restricted subsets of $\mathbb{N}_n=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ with $q\geq1$ being the largest member of the set $\mathcal{Q}$ of disallowed differences between subset elements. We obtain new results on various classes of problem…
We determine, up to multiplicative constants, the number of integers $n\le x$ that have no prime factor $\le w$ and a divisor in $(y,2y]$. Our estimate is uniform in $x,y,w$. We apply this to determine the order of the number of distinct…