Related papers: On large sum-free sets: revised bounds and pattern…
This is a sequel to the paper arXiv:1312.6438 by the same authors. In this sequel, we quantitatively improve several of the main results of arXiv:1312.6438, and build on the methods therein. The main new results is that, for any finite set…
We study the maximum cardinality problem of a set of few distances in the Hamming and Johnson spaces. We formulate semidefinite programs for this problem and extend the 2011 works by Barg-Musin and Musin-Nozaki. As our main result, we find…
Consider $S$, a set of $n$ points chosen uniformly at random and independently from the unit hypercube of dimension $t>2$. Order $S$ by using the Cartesian product of the $t$ standard orders of $[0,1]$. We determine a constant $\bar x(t)<e$…
A subset $A$ of a finite abelian group $G$ is called $(k,l)$-sum-free if the sum of $k$ (not-necessarily-distinct) elements of $A$ never equals the sum of $l$ (not-necessarily-distinct) elements of $A$. We find an explicit formula for the…
We present constructions of symmetric complete sum-free sets in general finite cyclic groups. It is shown that the relative sizes of the sets are dense in $[0,\frac{1}{3}]$, answering a question of Cameron, and that the number of those…
In this paper, we prove two lower bounds for the maximum matching size in an arbitrary undirected graph. Despite their simplicity, these results are not widely known. This article aims to bring pleasure to the reader by giving short…
We consider the size of large character sums, proving new lower bounds for the quantity $\Delta(N,q) = \sup_{\chi\neq \chi_0 mod q} |\sum_{n < N} \chi(n)|$ for almost all ranges of $N$. The results are proven using the resonance method and…
Ellenberg and Gijswijt gave the best known asymptotic upper bound for the cardinality of subsets of $\mathbb F_q^n$ without 3-term arithmetic progressions. We improve this bound by a factor $\sqrt{n}$. In the case $q=3$, we also obtain more…
A cap set is a subset of $\mathbb{F}_3^n$ with no solutions to $x+y+z=0$ other than when $x=y=z$. In this paper, we provide a new lower bound on the size of a maximal cap set. Building on a construction of Edel, we use improved…
We establish upper bounds for the size of two-distance sets in Euclidean space and spherical two-distance sets. The main recipe for obtaining upper bounds is the spectral method. We construct Seidel matrices to encode the distance relations…
Given an odd integer polynomial f(x) of a degree k >=3, we construct a non-negative valued, normed trigonometric polynomial with the spectrum in the set of integer values of f(x) not greater than n, and a small free coefficient…
We characterize the structure of maximum-size sum-free subsets of a random subset of an Abelian group $G$. In particular, we determine the threshold $p_c \approx \sqrt{\log n / n}$ above which, with high probability as $|G| \to \infty$,…
Improving upon earlier results of Freiman and the present authors, we show that if $p$ is a sufficiently large prime and $A$ is a sum-free subset of the group of order $p$, such that $n:=|A|>0.318p$, then $A$ is contained in a dilation of…
We address a problem posed by Nathan Kaplan in the 2014 Combinatorial and Additive Number Theory session: finding the largest subset $H \subseteq (\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z})^n$ with no distinct $x, y, z \in H$ such that $x + y + z \equiv 0…
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…
Given a linear equation $\mathcal{L}$, a set $A \subseteq [n]$ is $\mathcal{L}$-free if $A$ does not contain any `non-trivial' solutions to $\mathcal{L}$. In this paper we consider the following three general questions: (i) What is the size…
We prove new lower bounds on the maximum size of subsets $A\subseteq \{1,\dots,N\}$ or $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n$ not containing three-term arithmetic progressions. In the setting of $\{1,\dots,N\}$, this is the first improvement upon a…
Let $\boldsymbol{\alpha}\in \mathbb{R}^N$ and $Q\geq 1$. We consider the sum $\sum_{\boldsymbol{q}\in [-Q,Q]^N\cap\mathbb{Z}^N\backslash\{\boldsymbol{0}\}}\|\boldsymbol{\alpha}\cdot\boldsymbol{q}\|^{-1}$. Sharp upper bounds are known when…
Many canonical machine learning problems boil down to a convex optimization problem with a finite sum structure. However, whereas much progress has been made in developing faster algorithms for this setting, the inherent limitations of…
Motivated by applications to matrix multiplication algorithms, Pratt asked (ITCS'24) how large a subset of $[n] \times [n]$ could be without containing a skew-corner: three points $(x,y), (x,y+h),(x+h,y')$ with $h \ne 0$. We prove any skew…