English

Quantitative bounds in a popular polynomial Szemer\'{e}di theorem

Number Theory 2025-11-12 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

We obtain polylogarithmic bounds in the polynomial Szemer\'{e}di theorem when the polynomials have distinct degrees and zero constant terms. Specifically, let P1,,PmZ[y]P_1, \dots, P_m \in \mathbb Z[y] be polynomials with distinct degrees, each having zero constant term. Then there exists a constant c=c(P1,,Pm)>0c = c(P_1,\dots,P_m) > 0 such that any subset A{1,2,,N}A \subset \{1,2,\dots,N\} of density at least (logN)c(\log N)^{-c} contains a nontrivial polynomial progression of the form x,x+P1(y),,x+Pm(y)x, x+P_1(y), \dots, x+P_m(y). In addition, we prove an effective ``popular'' version, showing that every dense subset AA has some non-zero yy such that the number of polynomial progressions in AA with this difference yy is asymptotically at least as large as in a random set of the same density as AA.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.16822,
  title  = {Quantitative bounds in a popular polynomial Szemer\'{e}di theorem},
  author = {Xuancheng Shao and Mengdi Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.16822},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

25 pages. Comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-07-01T02:31:53.559Z