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

Fix a positive integer $n$ and consider the bipartite graph whose vertices are the $3$-element subsets and the $2$-element subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,\dots,n\}$, and there is an edge between $A$ and $B$ if $A\subset B$. We prove that the…

Given a set of $n$ real numbers, if the sum of elements of every subset of size larger than $k$ is negative, what is the maximum number of subsets of nonnegative sum? In this note we show that the answer is $\binom{n-1}{k-1} +…

We prove that the ratio of the Newman sum over numbers multiple of a fixed integer which is not multiple of 3 and the Newman sum over numbers multiple of a fixed integer divisible by 3 is o(1) when the upper limit of summing tends to…

The problem of looking for subsets of the natural numbers which contain no 3-term arithmetic progressions has a rich history. Roth's theorem famously shows that any such subset cannot have positive upper density. In contrast, Rankin in 1960…

Let $\mathcal{R}$ be a finite set of integers satisfying appropriate local conditions. We show the existence of long clusters of primes $p$ in bounded length intervals with $p-b$ squarefree for all $b \in \mathcal{R}$. Moreover, we can…

If $s$ is a positive integer and $A$ is a set of positive integers, we say that $B$ is an $s$-divisor of $A$ if $\sum_{b\in B} b\mid s\sum_{a\in A} a$. We study the maximal number of $k$-subsets of an $n$-element set that can be…

For a fixed integer $k \ge 0$, consider representations of positive integers as sums of binomial coefficients of the form $\binom{n}{k}$. While exact minimal bounds for the number of required summands are known only in a few low-dimensional…

Let A be a zero-sum free subset of Z_n with |A|=k. We compute for k\le 7 the least possible size of the set of all subset-sums of A.

A set A is square-difference free (henceforth SDF) if there do not exist x,y\in A, x\ne y, such that |x-y| is a square. Let sdf(n) be the size of the largest SDF subset of {1,...,n}. Ruzsa has shown that sdf(n) = \Omega(n^{0.5(1+ \log_{65}…

Let (G, *) be a semigroup, D subset of G, and n >= 2 be an integer. We say that (D, *) is an n-closed subset of G if a_1* ... *a_n in D for every a_1, ..., a_n in D. Hence every closed set is a 2-closed set. The concept of n-closed sets…

Let $p$ be a prime number with $p\equiv 2\pmod{3}$ and let $n\ge 1$ be a dimension. It is known that a sum-free subset of ${\mathbb F}_p^n$ can have at most the size $\frac13(p+1)p^{n-1}$ and that, up to automorphisms of ${\mathbb F}_p^n$,…

Given an integer n>1, it is a classical Diophantine problem that whether n can be written as a sum of two rational cubes. The study of this problem, considering several special cases of n, has a copious history that can be traced back to…

Szemer\'edi's theorem implies that there are $2^{o(n)}$ subsets of $[n]$ which do not contain a $k$-term arithmetic progression. A sparse analogue of this statement was obtained by Balogh, Morris, and Samotij, using the hypergraph container…

Let $\mathscr{M}_{(2,1)}(N)$ be the infimum of the largest sum-free subset of any set of $N$ positive integers. An old conjecture in additive combinatorics asserts that there is a constant $c=c(2,1)$ and a function $\omega(N)\to\infty$ as…

For a sequence $S$ over a finite abelian group, let $MZ(S)$ denote the length of the shortest nonempty zero-sum subsequence of $S$. We prove that if $G$ is finite abelian of order $n$ and $S$ has length $n$, then $MZ(S)\le n-|\supp(S)|+1$.…

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…

We investigate subsets with small sumset in arbitrary abelian groups. For an abelian group $G$ and an $n$-element subset $Y \subseteq G$ we show that if $m \ll s^2/(\log n)^2$, then the number of subsets $A \subseteq Y$ with $|A| = s$ and…

Recently, settling a question of Erd\H{o}s, Balogh and Pet\v{r}\'{i}\v{c}kov\'{a} showed that there are at most $2^{n^2/8+o(n^2)}$ $n$-vertex maximal triangle-free graphs, matching the previously known lower bound. Here we characterize the…

For any set $A$ of natural numbers with positive upper Banach density and any $k\geq 1$, we show the existence of an infinite set $B\subset{\mathbb N}$ and a shift $t\geq0$ such that $A-t$ contains all sums of $m$ distinct elements from $B$…

We study progression-free sets in the abelian groups $G=(\mathbb{Z}_m^n,+)$. Let $r_k(\mathbb{Z}_m^n)$ denote the maximal size of a set $S \subset \mathbb{Z}_m^n$ that does not contain a proper arithmetic progression of length $k$. We give…