Related papers: $L$--functions and sum--free sets

Let $A \subset \mathbb{Z}_{>0}$ of size $n$. It is conjectured that for any $C >0$ and $n$ large enough that $A$ contains a sum-free subset of size at least $n/3 +C$. We study this problem and find an alternate proof of Bourgain's result…

We count the ordered sum-free triplets of subsets in the group $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$, i.e., the triplets $(A,B,C)$ of sets $A,B,C \subset \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ for which the equation $a+b=c$ has no solution with $a\in A$, $b \in B$ and…

Let $n$ be a large number. A subset $A$ of $Z_n$ is complete if $S_A = Z_n$, where $S_A$ is the collection of the subset sums of $A$. Olson proved that if $n$ is a prime and $|A|> 2n^{1/2} $, then $S_A$ is complete. We show that a similar…

We study multiplicative functions $f$ satisfying $|f(n)|\le 1$ for all $n$, the associated Dirichlet series $F(s):=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} f(n) n^{-s}$, and the summatory function $S_f(x):=\sum_{n\le x} f(n)$. Up to a possible trivial…

Let $p$ a large enough prime number. When $A$ is a subset of $\mathbb{F}_p\smallsetminus\{0\}$ of cardinality $|A|> (p+1)/3$, then an application of Cauchy-Davenport Theorem gives $\mathbb{F}_p\smallsetminus\{0\}\subset A(A+A)$. In this…

Let G=SL_3(Z/pZ), p a prime. Let A be a set of generators of G. Then A grows under the group operation. To be precise: denote by |S| the number of elements of a finite set S. Assume |A| < |G|^{1-\epsilon} for some \epsilon>0. Then |A\cdot…

Let $P$ be a subset of the primes of lower density strictly larger than $\frac12$. Then, every sufficiently large even integer is a sum of four primes from the set $P$. We establish similar results for $k$-summands, with $k\geq 4$, and for…

A Steinhaus random multiplicative function $f$ is a completely multiplicative function obtained by setting its values on primes $f(p)$ to be independent random variables distributed uniformly on the unit circle. Recent work of Harper shows…

For a large prime $p$, and a polynomial $f$ over a finite field $F_p$ of $p$ elements, we obtain a lower bound on the size of the multiplicative subgroup of $F_p^*$ containing $H\ge 1$ consecutive values $f(x)$, $x = u+1, \ldots, u+H$,…

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…

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…

A subset $A$ of a given finite abelian group $G$ is called $(k,l)$-sum-free if the sum of $k$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $A$ does not equal the sum of $l$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $A$. We are interested in finding…

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 prove that for sets $A, B, C \subset \mathbb{F}_p$ with $|A|=|B|=|C| \leq \sqrt{p}$ and a fixed $0 \neq d \in \mathbb{F}_p$ holds $$ \max(|AB|, |(A+d)C|) \gg|A|^{1+1/26}. $$ In particular, $$ |A(A+1)| \gg |A|^{1 + 1/26} $$ and $$…

We discuss several questions concerning sum-free sets in groups, raised by Erd\H{o}s in his survey "Extremal problems in number theory" (Proceedings of the Symp. Pure Math. VIII AMS) published in 1965. Among other things, we give a…

Let $\Psi(x,y)$ denote the count of $y$-smooth numbers below $x$ and $P(n)$ denote the largest prime factor of $n$. We prove that for $f$ a Steinhaus random multiplicative function, the partial sums over $y$-smooth numbers always enjoy…

Let $G\cong \mathbb Z/m_1\mathbb Z\times\ldots\times \mathbb Z/m_r\mathbb Z$ be a finite abelian group with $m_1\mid\ldots\mid m_r=\exp(G)$. The Kemperman Structure Theorem characterizes all subsets $A,\,B\subseteq G$ satisfying…

We establish an asymptotic formula for the logarithmic mean value of a 1-bounded multiplicative function that is sharp in many cases of interest. We derive from it a variety of applications, making progress on several old problems. As a…

Erd\H{o}s showed that every set of $n$ positive integers contains a subset of size at least $n/(k+1)$ containing no solutions to $x_1 + \cdots + x_k = y$. We prove that the constant $1/(k+1)$ here is best possible by showing that if $(F_m)$…

In a work of Heath-Brown, it is proved that in the Pilz divisor problem, the normalized error term $\Delta_3(x)$ has a distribution function. In this paper, we prove an analogue of this result in the setting of GL(3). For a given self-dual…