Related papers: Most Subsets are Balanced in Finite Groups

R. Jin showed that whenever A and B are sets of integers having positive upper Banach density, the sumset A+B is piecewise syndetic. This result was strengthened by Bergelson, Furstenberg, and Weiss to conclude that A+B must be piecewise…

A More Sums Than Differences (MSTD) set is a set $A$ for which $|A+A|>|A-A|$. Martin and O'Bryant proved that the proportion of MSTD sets in $\{0,1,\dots,n\}$ is bounded below by a positive number as $n$ goes to infinity. Iyer, Lazarev,…

This paper describes problems concerning the range of cardinalities of sumsets and restricted sumsets of finite subsets of the integers and finite subsets of ordered abelian groups.

Merging together a result of Nathanson from the early 70s and a recent result of Granville and Walker, we show that for any finite set $A$ of integers with $\min(A)=0$ and $\gcd(A)=1$ there exist two sets, the "head" and the "tail", such…

Denoting by Sigma(S) the set of subset sums of a subset S of a finite abelian group G, we prove that |Sigma(S)| >= |S|(|S|+2)/4-1 whenever S is symmetric, |G| is odd and Sigma(S) is aperiodic. Up to an additive constant of 2 this result is…

For $p$ prime, $A \subseteq \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ and $\lambda \in \mathbb{Z}$, the sum of dilates $A + \lambda \cdot A$ is defined by \[A + \lambda \cdot A = \{a + \lambda a' : a, a' \in A\}.\] The basic problem on such sums of dilates…

Jin proved that whenever $A$ and $B$ are sets of positive upper density in $\Z$, $A+B$ is piecewise syndetic. Jin's theorem was subsequently generalized by Jin and Keisler to a certain family of abelian groups, which in particular contains…

Let $\mathbb{F}_p$ be a finite field of prime order $p$ and let $A \subset \mathbb{F}_p$ be a subset. In the dense regime when $|A| \geq \alpha p$ for some $\alpha \in (0,1)$, we determine the optimal constant $f(\alpha)$ in the inequality…

Motivated by questions asked by Erdos, we prove that any set $A\subset{\mathbb N}$ with positive upper density contains, for any $k\in{\mathbb N}$, a sumset $B_1+\cdots+B_k$, where $B_1,\dots,B_k\subset{\mathbb N}$ are infinite. Our proof…

For a set $A$ of integers, the sumset $lA =A+...+A$ consists of those numbers which can be represented as a sum of $l$ elements of $A$ $$lA =\{a_1+... a_l| a_i \in A_i \}. $$ A closely related and equally interesting notion is that of…

Let $G$ be a finite $2$-generated non-cyclic group. The spread of $G$ is the largest integer $k$ such that for any nontrivial elements $x_1, \ldots, x_k$, there exists $y \in G$ such that $G = \langle x_i, y\rangle$ for all $i$. The more…

Let A, B and S be three subsets of a finite Abelian group G. The restricted sumset of A and B with respect to S is defined as A\wedge^{S} B= {a+b: a in A, b in B and a-b not in S}. Let L_S=max_{z in G}| {(x,y): x,y in G, x+y=z and x-y in…

Given a set $A\subseteq\mathbb{N}$, we consider the relationship between stability of the structure $(\mathbb{Z},+,0,A)$ and sparsity of the set $A$. We first show that a strong enough sparsity assumption on $A$ yields stability of…

Given a finite set $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$, define the sum set $$A+A = \{a_i+a_j\mid a_i,a_j\in A\}$$ and the difference set $$A-A = \{a_i-a_j\mid a_i,a_j\in A\}.$$ The set $A$ is said to be sum-dominant if $|A+A|>|A-A|$. Hegarty used a…

Let $A$ and $B$ be finite subsets of $\mathbb{C}$ such that $|B|=C|A|$. We show the following variant of the sum product phenomenon: If $|AB|<\alpha|A|$ and $\alpha \ll \log |A|$, then $|kA+lB|\gg |A|^k|B|^l$. This is an application of a…

Let $A$ be a finite subset of an arbitrary additive group $G$, and let $\phi(A)$ denote the cardinality of the largest subset $B$ in $A$ that is sum-avoiding in $A$ (that is to say, $b_1+b_2 \not \in A$ for all distinct $b_1,b_2 \in B$).…

Let $h$ be a positive integer and $A, B_1, B_2,\dots, B_h$ be finite sets in a commutative group. We bound $|A+B_1+...+B_h|$ from above in terms of $|A|, |A+B_1|,\dots,|A+B_h|$ and $h$. Extremal examples, which demonstrate that the bound is…

Let $A = \{a_1, \ldots, a_k\}$ be a nonempty finite subset of an additive abelian group $G$. For a nonnegative integer $h$, the \emph{$h$-fold signed sumset} of $A$, denoted by $h_{\pm} A$, is defined by $$ h_{\pm} A = \Biggl\{\sum_{i =…

Let $S$ be a family of sequences of positive numbers that decrease to 0, let $X$ be a metric space and $A \subset X$. $A$ is said to be $S$-dominated if, for every $s\in S$, a countable cover $\{E_n\}$ of $E$ can be found such that $diam…

Let $(G,+)$ be a countable abelian group such that the subgroup $\{g+g\colon g\in G\}$ has finite index and the doubling map $g\mapsto g+g$ has finite kernel. We establish lower bounds on the upper density of a set $A\subset G$ with respect…