Related papers: The Erdos-Moser sum-free set problem

Cameron and Erd\H{o}s raised the question of how many maximal sum-free sets there are in $\{1, \dots , n\}$, giving a lower bound of $2^{\lfloor n/4 \rfloor }$. In this paper we prove that there are in fact at most $2^{(1/4+o(1))n}$ maximal…

Let $A\subset [1,x]$ be a non-empty set of primes with $|A|= \alpha x(\log x)^{-1}$. We prove that there exist absolute constants $c_1,c_2>0$ such that, as $x$ gets sufficiently large, we have $|A+A|\geq c_1(\log x)(\log \log…

A set of integers is called sum-free if it contains no triple $(x,y,z)$ of not necessarily distinct elements with $x+y=z$. In this paper, we provide a structural characterisation of sum-free subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ of density at least…

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…

Let $A$ be a finite, nonempty subset of an abelian group. We show that if every element of $A$ is a sum of two other elements, then $A$ has a nonempty zero-sum subset. That is, a (finite, nonempty) sum-full subset of an abelian group is not…

Let $A$ be an infinite set of nonnegative integers. For $h \geq 2$, let $hA$ be the set of all sums of $h$ not necessarily distinct elements of $A$. If every sufficiently large integer in the sumset $hA$ has at least two representations,…

Suppose that A is a subset of {1,...,N} such that the difference between any two elements of A is never one less than a prime. We show that |A| = O(N exp(-c(log N)^{1/4})) for some absolute c>0.

The sumset is one of the most basic and central objects in additive number theory. Many of the most important problems (such as Goldbach's conjecture and Fermat's Last theorem) can be formulated in terms of the sumset $S + S = \{x+y :…

Since addition is commutative but subtraction is not, the sumset S+S of a finite set S is predisposed to be smaller than the difference set S-S. In this paper, however, we show that each of the three possibilities (|S+S|>|S-S|, |S+S|=|S-S|,…

We show that if the difference of two elements of a set $A \subseteq [N]$ is never one less than a prime number, then $|A| = O (N \exp (-c (\log N)^{1/3}))$ for some absolute constant $c>0$.

We show that if G is a finite group and A is a subset of G with no non-trivial solutions to xz=yy then |A| < |G|/(log log |G|)^c.

An old problem of Moser asks: how large of a union-free subfamily does every family of m sets have? A family of sets is called union-free if there are no three distinct sets in the family such that the union of two of the sets is equal to…

In this paper we highlight a few open problems concerning maximal sum-free sets in abelian groups. In addition, for most even order abelian groups $G$ we asymptotically determine the number of maximal distinct sum-free subsets in $G$. Our…

Cameron and Erd\H{o}s asked whether the number of \emph{maximal} sum-free sets in $\{1, \dots , n\}$ is much smaller than the number of sum-free sets. In the same paper they gave a lower bound of $2^{\lfloor n/4 \rfloor }$ for the number of…

The basic theme of this paper is the fact that if $A$ is a finite set of integers, then the sum and product sets cannot both be small. A precise formulation of this fact is Conjecture 1 below due to Erd\H os-Szemer\'edi [E-S]. (see also…

Let $A$ be a subset of primes up to $x$. If we assume $A$ is well-distributed (in the Siegel-Walfisz sense) in any arithmetic progressions to moduli $q\leqslant(\log x)^c$ for any $c>0$, then the sumset $A+A$ has density 1/2 in the natural…

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…

We investigate additive properties of sets $A,$ where $A=\{a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_k\}$ is a monotone increasing set of real numbers, and the differences of consecutive elements are all distinct. It is known that $|A+B|\geq c|A||B|^{1/2}$ for any…

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…

Let $G$ be an infinite abelian group with $|2G|=|G|$. We show that if $G$ is not the direct sum of a group of exponent 3 and the group of order 2, then $G$ possesses a perfect additive basis; that is, there is a subset $S\subseteq G$ such…