A subset $S$ of a finite abelian group, written additively, is called zero-sumfree if the sum of the elements of each non-empty subset of $S$ is non-zero. We investigate the maximal cardinality of zero-sumfree sets, i.e., the (small) Olson constant. We determine the maximal cardinality of such sets for several new types of groups; in particular, $p$-groups with large rank relative to the exponent, including all groups with exponent at most five. These results are derived as consequences of more general...

We show that for any relatively prime integers 1 ≤ p < q and for any finite A ⊂ ℤ one has ${|p·A+q·A|\ge (p+q)\left|A\right|-\left(pq\right)}^{(p+q-3)(p+q)+1}$.

Let B be a set of complex numbers of size n. We prove that the length of the longest arithmetic progression contained in the product set B.B = bb’ | b,b’ ∈ B cannot be greater than O((nlog²n)/(loglogn)) and present an example of a product set containing an arithmetic progression of length Ω(nlogn). For sets of complex numbers we obtain the upper bound $O\left(n^{3/2}\right)$.

We show that if A and B are finite sets of real numbers, then the number of triples (a,b,c) ∈ A × B × (A ∪ B) with a + b = 2c is at most (0.15+o(1))(|A|+|B|)² as |A| + |B| → ∞. As a corollary, if A is antisymmetric (that is, A ∩ (-A) = ∅), then there are at most (0.3+o(1))|A|² triples (a,b,c) with a,b,c ∈ A and a - b = 2c. In the general case where A is not necessarily antisymmetric, we show that the number of triples (a,b,c) with a,b,c ∈ A and a - b = 2c is at most (0.5+o(1))|A|². These estimates...

Let $n>m\ge 2$ be positive integers and $n=(m+1)\ell +r$, where $0\le r\le m.$ Let $C$ be a subset of $\{0,1,\cdots ,n\}$. We prove that if $$\left|C\right|>\left\{\begin{array}{cc}\lfloor n/2\rfloor +1\hfill & \text{if}m\text{is}\text{odd},\hfill \\ m\ell /2+\delta \hfill & \text{if}m\text{is}\text{even},\hfill \end{array}\right.$$ where $\lfloor x\rfloor$ denotes the largest integer less than or equal to $x$ and $\delta$ denotes the cardinality of even numbers in the interval $[0,min\{r,m-2\left\}\right]$, then $C-C$ contains a power of $m$. We also show that these lower bounds are best possible.

We show that if A and B are subsets of the primes with positive relative lower densities α and β, then the lower density of A+B in the natural numbers is at least $(1-o\left(1\right))\alpha /\left(e^{\gamma }loglog(1/\beta )\right)$, which is asymptotically best possible. This improves results of Ramaré and Ruzsa and of Chipeniuk and Hamel. As in the latter work, the problem is reduced to a similar problem for subsets of $\mathbb{Z}{*}_m$ using techniques of Green and Green-Tao. Concerning this new problem we show that, for any square-free m and any $A,B\subseteq \mathbb{Z}{*}_m$ of densities α and β, the...

We offer a complete answer to the following question on the growth of sumsets in commutative groups. Let h be a positive integer and $A,B₁,...,B_h$ be finite sets in a commutative group. We bound $|A+B₁+...+B_h|$ from above in terms of |A|, |A + B₁|, ..., $|A+B_h|$ and h. Extremal examples, which demonstrate that the bound is asymptotically sharp in all parameters, are furthermore provided.

Given an additively written abelian group G and a set X ⊆ G, we let (X) denote the monoid of zero-sum sequences over X and (X) the Davenport constant of (X), namely the supremum of the positive integers n for which there exists a sequence x₁⋯xₙ in (X) such that ${\sum }_{i\in I}{x}_i\ne 0$ for each non-empty proper subset I of 1,...,n. In this paper, we mainly investigate the case when G is a power of ℤ and X is a box (i.e., a product of intervals of G). Some mixed sets (e.g., the product of a group by a box) are studied...

Let H be a Krull monoid with class group G. Then every nonunit a ∈ H can be written as a finite product of atoms, say $a=u_1·...·u_k$. The set (a) of all possible factorization lengths k is called the set of lengths of a. If G is finite, then there is a constant M ∈ ℕ such that all sets of lengths are almost arithmetical multiprogressions with bound M and with difference d ∈ Δ*(H), where Δ*(H) denotes the set of minimal distances of H. We show that max Δ*(H) ≤ maxexp(G)-2,(G)-1 and that equality holds if every...

Let A and B be finite sets in a commutative group. We bound |A+hB| in terms of |A|, |A+B| and h. We provide a submultiplicative upper bound that improves on the existing bound of Imre Ruzsa by inserting a factor that decreases with h.

We obtain an asymptotic formula for the number of visible points (x,y), that is, with gcd(x,y) = 1, which lie in the box [1,U] × [1,V] and also belong to the exponential modular curves $y\equiv a{g}^x\left(modp\right)$. Among other tools, some recent results of additive combinatorics due to J. Bourgain and M. Z. Garaev play a crucial role in our argument.

Let p be a prime, ℤₚ be the finite field in p elements, k be a positive integer, and A be the multiplicative subgroup of nonzero kth powers in ℤₚ. The goal of this paper is to determine, for a given positive integer s, a value tₛ such that if |A| ≫ tₛ then every element of ℤₚ is a sum of s kth powers. We obtain $t₄=p^{22/39+ϵ}$, $t₅=p^{15/29+ϵ}$ and for s ≥ 6, $tₛ=p^{(9s+45)/(29s+33)+ϵ}$. For s ≥ 24 further improvements are made, such as $t_{32}=p^{5/16+ϵ}$ and $t_{128}=p^{1/4}$.