A zero-sum sequence over ℤ is a sequence with terms in ℤ that sum to 0. It is called minimal if it does not contain a proper zero-sum subsequence. Consider a minimal zero-sum sequence over ℤ with positive terms $a₁,...,a_h$ and negative terms $b₁,...,b_k$. We prove that h ≤ ⌊σ⁺/k⌋ and k ≤ ⌊σ⁺/h⌋, where $\sigma ⁺={\sum }_{i=1}^h{a}_i=-{\sum }_{j=1}^k{b}_j$. These bounds are tight and improve upon previous results. We also show a natural partial order structure on the collection of all minimal zero-sum sequences over the set i∈ ℤ : -n ≤ i ≤ n for any positive integer n.

Let K be an algebraic number field with non-trivial class group G and ${}_K$ be its ring of integers. For k ∈ ℕ and some real x ≥ 1, let $F_k\left(x\right)$ denote the number of non-zero principal ideals $a_K$ with norm bounded by x such that a has at most k distinct factorizations into irreducible elements. It is well known that $F_k\left(x\right)$ behaves, for x → ∞, asymptotically like $x{\left(logx\right)}^{1/\left|G\right|-1}{\left(loglogx\right)}^{{}_k\left(G\right)}$. In this article, it is proved that for every prime p, $₁\left(C_p\oplus C_p\right)=2p$, and it is also proved that $₁\left(C_{mp}\oplus C_{mp}\right)=2mp$ if $₁\left(C_m\oplus C_m\right)=2m$ and m is large enough. In particular, it is shown that for...

We prove that every set A ⊂ ℤ satisfying ${\sum }_{x}min(1_A*1_A\left(x\right),t)\le (2+\delta )t\left|A\right|$ for t and δ in suitable ranges must be very close to an arithmetic progression. We use this result to improve the estimates of Green and Morris for the probability that a random subset A ⊂ ℕ satisfies |ℕ∖(A+A)| ≥ k; specifically, we show that $\mathbb{P}\left(\right|\mathbb{N}\setminus (A+A)\left|\ge k\right)=\Theta \left(2^{-k/2}\right)$.