Related papers: Finding linear patterns of complexity one

Fix a density d in (0,1], and let F_p^n be a finite field, where we think of p fixed and n tending to infinity. Let S be any subset of F_p^n having the minimal number of three-term progressions, subject to the constraint |S| is at least…

For $n=1,2,3,\ldots$ let $S_n$ be the sum of the first $n$ primes. We mainly show that the sequence $a_n=\root n\of{S_n/n}\ (n=1,2,3,\ldots)$ is strictly decreasing, and moreover the sequence $a_{n+1}/a_n\ (n=10,11,\ldots)$ is strictly…

Green proved an arithmetic analogue of Szemer\'edi's celebrated regularity lemma and used it to verify a conjecture of Bergelson, Host, and Kra which sharpens Roth's theorem on three-term arithmetic progressions in dense sets. It shows that…

Let $f_{s,k}(n)$ be the maximum possible number of $s$-term arithmetic progressions in a sequence $a_1<a_2<\ldots<a_n$ of $n$ integers which contains no $k$-term arithmetic progression. For all integers $k > s \geq 3$, we prove that…

We study arithmetic progressions in primes with common differences as small as possible. Tao and Ziegler showed that, for any $k \geq 3$ and $N$ large, there exist non-trivial $k$-term arithmetic progressions in (any positive density subset…

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 show that sets of integers lacking the configuration $x$, $x+y$, $x+y^2$ have at most polylogarithmic density.

We provide upper bounds on the density of a symmetric generalized arithmetic progression lacking nonzero elements of the form h(n) for natural numbers n, or h(p) with p prime, for appropriate polynomials h with integer coefficients. The…

Let A \subseteq [1,..,N]^2 be a set of cardinality at least N^2/(log log N)^c, where c>0 is an absolute constant. We prove that A contains a triple {(k,m), (k+d,m), (k,m+d)}, where d>0. This theorem is a two-dimensional generalization of…

Suppose that $A \subset \mathbb{R}$ has positive upper density, \[ \limsup_{|I| \to \infty} \frac{|A \cap I|}{|I|} = \delta > 0,\] and $P(t) \in \mathbb{R}[t]$ is a polynomial with no constant or linear term, or more generally a non-flat…

Let $1 < p < \infty$, $p\neq 2$. We prove that if $d\geq d_p$ is sufficiently large, and $A\subs\R^d$ is a measurable set of positive upper density then there exists $\la_0=\la_0(A)$ such for all $\la\geq\la_0$ there are $x,y\in\R^d$ such…

Given a positive integer $N$ and real number $\alpha\in [0, 1]$, let $m(\alpha,N)$ denote the minimum, over all sets $A\subset \mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ of size at least $\alpha N$, of the normalized count of 3-term arithmetic progressions…

A set of positive integers $A \subset \mathbb{Z}_{> 0}$ is \emph{log-sparse} if there is an absolute constant $C$ so that for any positive integer $x$ the sequence contains at most $C$ elements in the interval $[x,2x)$. In this note we…

Given a subset of the integers of zero density, we define the weaker notion of fractional density of such a set. It is shown how this notion corresponds to that of the Hausdorff dimension of a compact subset of the reals. We then show that…

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…

In this paper we show that if $A$ is a subset of the primes with positive relative density $\delta$, then $A+A$ must have positive upper density $C_1\delta e^{-C_2(\log(1/\delta))^{2/3}(\log\log(1/\delta))^{1/3}}$ in $\mathbb{N}$. Our…

We give an elementary, Fourier-free proof of Roth's theorem. The proof follows Roth's original density-increment strategy, but replaces the usual Fourier-analytic step with a direct combinatorial argument involving averages over…

Let $A\subset\left\{ 1,\dots,N\right\} $ be a set of prime numbers containing no non-trivial arithmetic progressions. Suppose that $A$ has relative density $\alpha=|A|/\pi(N)$, where $\pi(N)$ denotes the number of primes in the set $\left\{…

We show that for a subset $A$ of the cyclic group of prime order $p>3$, if the sumset $A+A-2A$ is not the whole group, then $|A|\le \frac27\,p$. Besides combinatorial arguments, we utilize a general technique involving linear programming.

For any integer $n \geq 2$, let $(m_{1},\ldots,m_{n})$ be a strictly increasing $n$-tuple of positive integers. We show that any subset $A\subset [N]^n$ of density at least $(\log N)^{-c}$ contains a nontrivial configuration of the form…