Related papers: Small subsets without $k$-term arithmetic progress…

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…

The celebrated Green-Tao theorem states that there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions in the primes. One of the main ingredients in their proof is a relative Szemer\'edi theorem which says that any subset of a pseudorandom set of…

Let $f_{s,k}(n)$ be the maximum possible number of $s$-term arithmetic progressions in a sequence $a_1<a_2<\ldots<a_n$ of $n$ integers which contains no $k$-term arithmetic progression. For all integers $k > s \geq 3$, we prove that…

Let the integers $1,\ldots,n$ be assigned colors. Szemer\'edi's theorem implies that if there is a dense color class then there is an arithmetic progression of length three in that color. We study the conditions on the color classes forcing…

A famous theorem of Szemer\'edi asserts that given any density $0 < \delta \leq 1$ and any integer $k \geq 3$, any set of integers with density $\delta$ will contain infinitely many proper arithmetic progressions of length $k$. For general…

Let $r_k(N)$ denote the size of the largest subset of $[N] = \{1,\ldots,N\}$ with no $k$-term arithmetic progression. We show that for $k\ge 5$, there exists $c_k>0$ such that \[r_k(N)\ll N\exp(-(\log\log N)^{c_k}).\] Our proof is a…

Green and Tao famously proved in 2005 that any subset of the primes of fixed positive density contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. Green had previously shown that in fact any subset of the primes of relative density tending to…

Let $r_k(n)$ denote the maximum cardinality of a set $A \subset \{1,2, \dots, n \}$ such that $A$ does not contain a $k$-term arithmetic progression. In this paper, we give a method of constructing such a set and prove the lower bound…

We construct subsets of {1,...,N} of cardinality at least N exp(-C(log N)^{1/(k+1)}) which do not contain arithmetic progressions of length 2^k+1. This extends a result of Behrend (1946) concerning sets which do not contain aritmetic…

Let $A$ be a subset of positive relative upper density of $\PP^d$, the $d$-tuples of primes. We prove that $A$ contains an affine copy of any finite set $F\subs\Z^d$, which provides a natural multi-dimensional extension of the theorem of…

In this paper we study sum-free subsets of the set $\{1,...,n\}$, that is, subsets of the first $n$ positive integers which contain no solution to the equation $x + y = z$. Cameron and Erd\H{o}s conjectured in 1990 that the number of such…

A strictly increasing sequence of positive integers is called a slightly curved sequence with small error if the sequence can be well-approximated by a function whose second derivative goes to zero faster than or equal to $1/x^\alpha$ for…

We study arithmetic progressions in primes with common differences as small as possible. Tao and Ziegler showed that, for any $k \geq 3$ and $N$ large, there exist non-trivial $k$-term arithmetic progressions in (any positive density subset…

We show that for some constant $\beta > 0$, any subset $A$ of integers $\{1,\ldots,N\}$ of size at least $2^{-O((\log N)^\beta)} \cdot N$ contains a non-trivial three-term arithmetic progression. Previously, three-term arithmetic…

Szemer\'edi's Theorem states that a set of integers with positive upper density contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. Bergelson and Leibman generalized this, showing that sets of integers with positive upper density contain…

Let $P_1,\dots,P_m\in\mathbb{Z}[y]$ be any linearly independent polynomials with zero constant term. We show that there exists a $\gamma>0$ such that any subset of $\mathbb{F}_q$ of size at least $q^{1-\gamma}$ contains a nontrivial…

A famous theorem of Szemer\'edi asserts that any set of integers of positive upper density will contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. In its full generality, we know of four types of arguments that can prove this theorem: the…

We consider, over both the integers and finite fields, Szemer\'{e}di's theorem on $k$-term arithmetic progressions where the set $S$ of allowed common differences in those progressions is restricted and random. Fleshing out a line of…

Recently Conlon, Fox, and the author gave a new proof of a relative Szemer\'edi theorem, which was the main novel ingredient in the proof of the celebrated Green-Tao theorem that the primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions.…

We show that for every positive integer $k$ there are positive constants $C$ and $c$ such that if $A$ is a subset of $\{1, 2, \dots, n\}$ of size at least $C n^{1/k}$, then, for some $d \leq k-1$, the set of subset sums of $A$ contains a…