Related papers: Sum-free Sets of Integers with a Forbidden Sum

Sharpening (a particular case of) a result of Szemeredi and Vu and extending earlier results of Sarkozy and ourselves, we find, subject to some technical restrictions, a sharp threshold for the number of integer sets needed for their sumset…

Addressing a question of Cameron and Erd\Ho s, we show that, for infinitely many values of $n$, the number of subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ that do not contain a $k$-term arithmetic progression is at most $2^{O(r_k(n))}$, where $r_k(n)$ is…

A nonzero rational number is called a cube sum if it is of form $a^3+b^3$ with $a,b\in \mathbb{Q}^\times$. In this paper, we prove that for any odd integer $k\geq 1$, there exist infinitely many cube-free odd integers $n$ with exactly $k$…

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…

Let (G, +) be an abelian group. A subset of G is sumfree if it contains no elements x, y, z such that x +y = z. We extend this concept by introducing the Schur degree of a subset of G, where Schur degree 1 corresponds to sumfree. The…

We consider the possible sizes of large sumfree sets contained in the discrete hypercube $\{1,...,n\}^k$, and we determine upper and lower bounds for the maximal size as $n$ becomes large. We also discuss a continuous analogue in which our…

We prove new lower bounds on the maximum size of sets $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n$ or $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}_m^n$ not containing three-term arithmetic progressions (consisting of three distinct points). More specifically, we prove that for…

Let $s(n):= \sum_{d\mid n,~d<n} d$ denote the sum of the proper divisors of $n$. It is natural to conjecture that for each integer $k\ge 2$, the equivalence \[ \text{$n$ is $k$th powerfree} \Longleftrightarrow \text{$s(n)$ is $k$th…

There has been much work on the following question: given n how large can a subset of {1,...,n} be that has no arithmetic progressions of length 3. We call such sets 3-free. Most of the work has been asymptotic. In this paper we sketch…

In the area of forbidden subposet problems we look for the largest possible size $La(n,P)$ of a family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq 2^{[n]}$ that does not contain a forbidden inclusion pattern described by $P$. The main conjecture of the area…

Let $A$ be a nonempty finite set of $k$ integers. Given a subset $B$ of $A$, the sum of all elements of $B$, denoted by $s(B)$, is called the subset sum of $B$. For a nonnegative integer $\alpha$ ($\leq k$), let \[\Sigma_{\alpha}…

A family of sets is union-free if there are no three distinct sets in the family such that the union of two of the sets is equal to the third set. Kleitman proved that every union-free family has size at most $(1+o(1))\binom{n}{n/2}$.…

A poset is (3+1)-free if it does not contain the disjoint union of chains of length 3 and 1 as an induced subposet. These posets play a central role in the (3+1)-free conjecture of Stanley and Stembridge. Lewis and Zhang have enumerated…

We prove that every positive integer $n$ which is not equal to $1$, $2$, $3$, $6$, $11$, $30$, $155$, or $247$ can be represented as a sum of a squarefree number and a prime not exceeding $\sqrt{n}$.

We show that, in contrast to the integers setting, almost all even order abelian groups $G$ have exponentially fewer maximal sum-free sets than $2^{\mu(G)/2}$, where $\mu(G)$ denotes the size of a largest sum-free set in $G$. This confirms…

We show that a zero-sum-free sequence of length $n$ over an abelian group spans at least $2n$ distinct subsequence sums, unless it possesses a rigid, easily-described structure.

We show that a finite zero-sum-free sequence $\alpha$ over an abelian group has at least $c|\alpha|^{4/3}$ distinct subsequence sums, unless $\alpha$ is "controlled" by a small number of its terms; here $|\alpha|$ denotes the number of…

An exact formula \[ B(n) = \frac{n}{2}(\lfloor \lg n \rfloor + 1) - \sum _{k=0} ^{\lfloor \lg n \rfloor} 2^k Zigzag(\frac{n}{2^{k+1}}), \] where \[ Zigzag (x) = \min (x - \lfloor x \rfloor, \lceil x \rceil - x), \] for the minimal number $…

The Subset Sum problem asks whether a given set of $n$ positive integers contains a subset of elements that sum up to a given target $t$. It is an outstanding open question whether the $O^*(2^{n/2})$-time algorithm for Subset Sum by…

For integers $m$ and $n$, we study the problem of finding good lower bounds for the size of progression-free sets in $(\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n},+)$. Let $r_{k}(\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n})$ denote the maximal size of a subset of $\mathbb{Z}_{m}^{n}$…