Related papers: The relative sizes of sumsets and difference sets

We show that for any set $A \subset \mathbb{N}$ with positive upper density and any $\ell,m \in \mathbb{N}$, there exist an infinite set $B\subset \mathbb{N}$ and some $t\in \mathbb{N}$ so that $\{mb_1 + \ell b_2 \colon b_1,b_2\in B\…

Let $A$ be a subset of the cyclic group $\mathbf{Z}/p\mathbf{Z}$ with $p$ prime. It is a well-studied problem to determine how small $|A|$ can be if there is no unique sum in $A+A$, meaning that for every two elements $a_1,a_2\in A$, there…

Let $F$ be a field and a finite $A\subset F$ be sufficiently small in terms of the characteristic $p$ of $F$ if $p>0$. We strengthen the "threshold" sum-product inequality $$|AA|^3 |A\pm A|^2 \gg |A|^6\,,\;\;\;\;\mbox{hence} \;\;…

We prove that for any finite set A of real numbers its difference set D:=A-A has large product set and quotient set, namely, |DD|, |D/D| \gg |D|^{1+c}, where c>0 is an absolute constant. A similar result takes place in the prime field F_p…

Let $A$ be a finite set of integers. We show that if $k$ is a prime power or a product of two distinct primes then $$|A+k\cdot A|\geq(k+1)|A|-\lceil k(k+2)/4\rceil$$ provided $|A|\geq (k-1)^{2}k!$, where $A+k\cdot A=\{a+kb:\ a,b\in A\}$. We…

Let $\beta,\epsilon \in (0,1]$, and $k \geq \exp(122 \max\{1/\beta,1/\epsilon\})$. We prove that if $A,B$ are subsets of a prime field $\mathbb{Z}_{p}$, and $|B| \geq p^{\beta}$, then there exists a sum of the form $$S = a_{1}B \pm \ldots…

Improving upon the results of Freiman and Candela-Serra-Spiegel, we show that for a non-empty subset $A\subseteq\mathbb F_p$ with $p$ prime and $|A|<0.0045p$, (i) if $|A+A|<2.59|A|-3$ and $|A|>100$, then $A$ is contained in an arithmetic…

In this paper we start to investigate a new body of questions in additive combinatorics. The fundamental Cauchy--Davenport theorem gives a lower bound on the size of a sumset A+B for subsets of the cyclic group Zp of order p (p prime), and…

A natural number $n$ is called semi-prime if it is a product of two primes or a square of a prime. We denote $\mathbb{P}_2$ the set of all semi-primes. Our goal is to prove that for fixed integer number $a$ and sufficiently large $x$ the…

A $k$-sum of a set $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}$ is an integer that may be expressed as a sum of $k$ distinct elements of $A$. How large can the ratio of the number of $(k+1)$-sums to the number of $k$-sums be? Writing $k\wedge A$ for the set of…

In the paper we obtain some new upper bounds for exponential sums over multiplicative subgroups G of F^*_p having sizes in the range [p^{c_1}, p^{c_2}], where c_1,c_2 are some absolute constants close to 1/2. As an application we prove that…

In the paper we prove that any sumset or difference set has large E_3 energy. Also, we give a full description of families of sets having critical relations between some kind of energies such as E_k, T_k and Gowers norms. In particular, we…

Given a set $A=\{a_1,\ldots,a_n\}$ of real numbers and real coefficients $b_1,\ldots,b_n$, consider the distribution of the sum obtained by pairing the $a_i$'s with the $b_i$'s according to a uniformly random permutation. A recent theorem…

Given a finite poset $\mathcal P$ and two distinct elements $x$ and $y$, we let $\operatorname{pr}_{\mathcal P}(x \prec y)$ denote the fraction of linear extensions of $\mathcal P$ in which $x$ precedes $y$. The balance constant…

Let $d(n)$ be the Dirichlet divisor function and $\Delta(x)$ denote the error term of the sum $\sum_{n\leqslant x}d(n)$ for a large real variable $x$. In this paper we focus on the sum $\sum_{p\leqslant x}\Delta^2(p)$, where $p$ runs over…

We show that if $A=\{a_1,a_2,..., a_k\}$ is a monotone increasing set of numbers, and the differences of the consecutive elements are all distinct, then $|A+B|\geq c|A|^{1/2}|B|$ for any finite set of numbers $B$. The bound is tight up to…

Let A be a finite subset of the integers or, more generally, of any abelian group, written additively. The set A has "more sums than differences" if |A+A|>|A-A|. A set with this property is called an MSTD set. This paper gives explicit…

Let $\mathcal S^2$ be the Stepanov space and let $ \lambda_n\uparrow\infty$. Let $(a_n)_{n\ge 1}$ be satisfying Wiener's condition $A:= \sum_{n\ge 1} \big(\sum_{k\, :\, n\le \lambda_k \le n+1}|a_k|\big)^2 <\infty$. We prove that $\big\|…

We show that if a subset A of {1,...,N} does not contain any solutions to the equation x+y+z=3w with the variables not all equal, then A has size at most exp(-c(log N)^{1/7}) N, where c > 0 is some absolute constant. In view of Behrend's…

On May 14, 2025, DeepMind announced that AlphaEvolve, a large language model applied to a set of mathematical problems, had matched or exceeded the best known bounds on several problems. In the case of the sum and difference of sets…