English

The Erdos-Turan problem in infinite groups

Number Theory 2009-01-13 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

Let GG be an infinite abelian group with 2G=G|2G|=|G|. We show that if GG is not the direct sum of a group of exponent 3 and the group of order 2, then GG possesses a perfect additive basis; that is, there is a subset SGS\subseteq G such that every element of GG is uniquely representable as a sum of two elements of SS. Moreover, if GG \emph{is} the direct sum of a group of exponent 3 and the group of order 2, then it does not have a perfect additive basis; however, in this case there is a subset SGS\subseteq G such that every element of GG has at most two representations (distinct under permuting the summands) as a sum of two elements of SS. This solves completely the Erdos-Turan problem for infinite groups. It is also shown that if GG is an abelian group of exponent 2, then there is a subset SGS\subseteq G such that every element of GG has a representation as a sum of two elements of SS, and the number of representations of non-zero elements is bounded by an absolute constant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0901.1649,
  title  = {The Erdos-Turan problem in infinite groups},
  author = {Sergei V. Konyagin and Vsevolod F. Lev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0901.1649},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:59:57.080Z