The sum-product problem for small sets II
Abstract
We establish that every set of natural numbers determines at least distinct pairwise sums or at least distinct pairwise products, as well as the analogous result for and at least sums/products, with sharpness uniquely (up to scaling) exhibited by and , respectively. This extends previous work of the fifth author with Clevenger, Havard, Heard, Lott, and Wilson, which established the corresponding thresholds for . Included is a classification result for sets of real numbers (resp. positive real numbers) determining at most pairwise sums (resp. pairwise products) that do not contain 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.
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