English

The sum-product problem for small sets II

Combinatorics 2026-03-06 v3 Number Theory

Abstract

We establish that every set of k=10k=10 natural numbers determines at least 3030 distinct pairwise sums or at least 3030 distinct pairwise products, as well as the analogous result for k=11k=11 and at least 3434 sums/products, with sharpness uniquely (up to scaling) exhibited by {1,2,3,4,6,8,9,12,16,18}\{1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18\} and {1,2,3,4,6,8,9,12,16,18,24}\{1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24\}, respectively. This extends previous work of the fifth author with Clevenger, Havard, Heard, Lott, and Wilson, which established the corresponding thresholds for k9k\leq 9. Included is a classification result for sets of 1010 real numbers (resp. positive real numbers) determining at most 2929 pairwise sums (resp. pairwise products) that do not contain 88 elements of any single arithmetic progression (resp. geometric progression), as well as some observations controlling additive quadruples in small subsets of two-dimensional generalized geometric progressions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.21828,
  title  = {The sum-product problem for small sets II},
  author = {Phillip Antis and Holden Britt and Caleigh Chapman and Elizabeth Hawkins and Alex Rice and Elyse Warren},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.21828},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, 3 algorithms, uniqueness established in Section 5 with Theorem 1.5 updated accordingly, Lemma 3.1 statement corrected, typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:25:52.694Z