Related papers: Sum-free sets in $Z_5^n$

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…

The $3k-4$ Theorem asserts that, if $A,\,B\subseteq \mathbb Z$ are finite, nonempty subsets with $|A|\geq |B|$ and $|A+B|=|A|+|B|+r< |A|+2|B|-3$, then there are arithmetic progressions $P_A$ and $P_B$ of common difference with $X\subseteq…

In this note we give a characterization of elementary abelian 2-groups in terms of their maximal sum-free subsets.

A family $\mathcal{F}\subset 2^G$ of subsets of an abelian group $G$ is a Sidon system if the sumsets $A+B$ with $A,B\in \mathcal{F}$ are pairwise distinct. Cilleruelo, Serra and the author previously proved that the maximum size $F_k(n)$…

Any group that has a subnormal series, in which all factors are abelian and all except the last one are $p'$-torsion-free, can be embedded into a group with a subnormal series of the same length, with the same properties and such that any…

We prove that, if $G$ is a finite almost simple group and $H$ is a maximal subgroup of $G$, then the $10$th term of the derived series of $H$ is perfect. The same is true if $G$ is perfect and $H$ is core-free. The constant $10$ is best…

Let $p$ be a prime. We define $S(p)$ the smallest number $k$ such that every positive integer is a sum of at most $k$ squares of integers that are not divisible by $p$. In this article, we prove that $S(2)=10$, $S(3)=6$, $S(5)=5$, and…

We prove that there is an absolute constant $c>0$ with the following property: if $Z/pZ$ denotes the group of prime order $p$, and a subset $A\subset Z/pZ$ satisfies $1<|A|<p/2$, then for any positive integer…

For an $n$-bit positive integer $a$ written in binary as $$ a = \sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \varepsilon_{j}(a) \,2^j $$ where, $\varepsilon_j(a) \in \{0,1\}$, $j\in\{0, \ldots, n-1\}$, $\varepsilon_{n-1}(a)=1$, let us define $$ \overleftarrow{a} =…

Let $\mathbb{F}_p$ be the field of residue classes modulo a prime number $p$ and let $A$ be a non-empty subset of $\mathbb{F}_p.$ In this paper we give an explicit version of the sum-product estimate of Bourgain, Katz, Tao and Bourgain,…

In this paper we establish some new supercongruences motivated by the well-known fact $\lim_{n\to\infty}(1+1/n)^n=e$. Let $p>3$ be a prime. We prove that $$\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}\binom{-1/(p+1)}k^{p+1}\equiv 0\ \pmod{p^5}\ \ \ \mbox{and}\ \ \…

For a given subset $A\subseteq \mathbb F_q^*$, we study the problem of finding a large packing set $B$ of $A$, that is, a set $B \subseteq \mathbb F_q^*$ such that $|AB|=|A||B|$. We prove the existence of such a $B$ of size $|B|\ge…

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…

A set A of integers is said to be sum-free if there are no solutions to the equation x + y = z with x,y and z all in A. Answering a question of Cameron and Erdos, we show that the number of sum-free subsets of {1,...,N} is O(2^(N/2)).

Let $3\le d\le k$ and $\nu\ge 0$ be fixed and $\mathcal{F}\subset\binom{[n]}{k}$. The matching number of $\mathcal{F}$, denoted by $\nu(\mathcal{F})$, is the maximum number of pairwise disjoint sets in $\mathcal{F}$, and $\mathcal{F}$ is…

We prove several supercongruences involving the harmonic number of order two $H_n^{(2)}:=\sum_{k=1}^n1/k^2$. For example, if $p>5$ is prime and $\alpha$ is $p$-integral, then we can completely determine $$…

Let $\mathbb{F}_p$ be a finite field of prime order $p$ and let $A \subset \mathbb{F}_p$ be a subset. In the dense regime when $|A| \geq \alpha p$ for some $\alpha \in (0,1)$, we determine the optimal constant $f(\alpha)$ in the inequality…

We prove that, for any prime number $p\geq 5$, the set of natural numbers $n$ such that $p\mid H_n$ is finite.

Kemnitz Conjecture [9] states that if we take a sequence of elements in $Z_{p}^{2}$ of length $4p-3$, $p$ is a prime number, then it has a subsequence of length $p$, whose sum is $0$ modulo $p$. It is known that in $Z_{p}^{3}$ to get a…

Let $G$ be a finite abelian group, let $0 < \alpha < 1$, and let $A \subseteq G$ be a random set of size $|G|^\alpha$. We let $$ \mu(A) = \max_{B,C:|B|=|C|=|A|}|\{(a,b,c) \in A \times B \times C : a = b + c \}|. $$ The issue is to determine…