Related papers: Set avoiding squares in $\mathbb{Z}_m$

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…

Eberhard and Pohoata conjectured that every $3$-cube-free subset of $[N]$ has size less than $2N/3+o(N)$. In this paper we show that if we replace $[N]$ with $\mathbb{Z}_N$ the upper bound of $2N/3$ holds, and the bound is tight when $N$ is…

The $3k-4$ conjecture in groups $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ for $p$ prime states that if $A$ is a nonempty subset of $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ satisfying $2A\neq \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ and $|2A|=2|A|+r \leq \min\{3|A|-4,\;p-r-4\}$, then $A$ is…

The discriminant of a trinomial of the form $x^n \pm x^m \pm 1$ has the form $\pm n^n \pm (n-m)^{n-m} m^m$ if $n$ and $m$ are relatively prime. We investigate when these discriminants have nontrivial square factors. We explain various…

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…

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…

Given a matrix $M = (a_{i,j})$ a square is a $2 \times 2$ submatrix with entries $a_{i,j}$, $a_{i, j+s}$, $a_{i+s, j}$, $a_{i+s, j +s}$ for some $s \geq 1$, and a zero-sum square is a square where the entries sum to $0$. Recently,…

Let $\sigma(n)$ to be the sum of the positive divisors of $n$. A number is non-deficient if $\sigma(n) \geq 2n$. We establish new lower bounds for the number of distinct prime factors of an odd non-deficient number in terms of its second…

We try to find all quadruples of positive integers $(m,a,b,c)$ with $a \geq b \geq c$ such that there exists a distinct covering system with minimum modulus $m$ and least common multiple of the moduli $2^a 3^b 5^c$. We obtain complete…

Fix $\alpha \in (0,1/3)$. We show that, from a topological point of view, almost all sets $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ have the property that, if $A^\prime=A$ for all but $o(n^{\alpha})$ elements, then $A^\prime$ is not a nontrivial sumset…

Let $k\geq 2$ be a square-free integer. We prove that the number of square-free integers $m\in [1,N]$ such that $(k,m)=1$ and $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[3]{k^2m})$ is monogenic is $\gg N^{1/3}$ and $\ll N/(\log N)^{1/3-\epsilon}$ for any…

We determine all integers $n$ such that $n^2$ has at most three base-$q$ digits for $q \in \{2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 16 \}$. More generally, we show that all solutions to equations of the shape $$ Y^2 = t^2 + M \cdot q^m + N \cdot q^n, $$ where $q$…

This paper discusses the question of how many non-empty subsets of the set $[n] = \{ 1, 2, ..., n\}$ we can choose so that no chosen subset is the union of some other chosen subsets. Let $M(n)$ be the maximum number of subsets we can…

We show that if $A\subset \mathbb{Z}$ is a finite set of integers in which every integer is divisible by $O(1)$ many primes then \[\max(\lvert A+A\rvert,\lvert AA\rvert) \geq \lvert A\rvert^{12/7-o(1)}\] and, for any $m\geq 2$,…

A Nikodym set $\mathcal{N}\subseteq(\mathbb{Z}/(N\mathbb{Z}))^n$ is a set containing $L\setminus\{x\}$ for every $x\in(\mathbb{Z}/(N\mathbb{Z}))^n$, where $L$ is a line passing through $x$. We prove that if $N$ is square-free, then the size…

In this paper we study sum-free sets of order $m$ in finite Abelian groups. We prove a general theorem on 3-uniform hypergraphs, which allows us to deduce structural results in the sparse setting from stability results in the dense setting.…

A set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^n$ is sum-free if $A+A$ does not intersect $A$. If $p\equiv 2 \mod 3$, the maximal size of a sum-free in $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ is known to be $(p^n+p^{n-1})/3$. We show that if a sum-free set $A\subset…

For an odd positive integer $n\ge 5$, assuming the truth of the $abc$ conjecture, we show that for a positive proportion of pairs $(a,b)$ of integers the trinomials of the form $t^n+at+b (a,b\in \mathbb Z)$ are irreducible and their…

We prove that if a subset of $(\mathbb{F}_q^n)^k$ (with $q$ an odd prime power) avoids a full-rank three-point pattern $\vec{x},\vec{x}+M_1\vec{d},\vec{x}+M_2\vec{d}$ then it is exponentially small, having size at most $3 \cdot c_q^{nk}$…

We classify the sum-free subsets of ${\mathbb F}_3^n$ whose density exceeds $\frac16$. This yields a resolution of Vsevolod Lev's periodicity conjecture, which asserts that if a sum-free subset ${A\subseteq {\mathbb F}_3^n}$ is maximal with…