Let C and W be two integer sets. If $C+W=\mathbb {Z}$, then we say that C is an additive complement to W. If no proper subset of C is an additive complement to W, then we say that C is a minimal additive complement to W. We study the existence of a minimal additive complement to $W=\{w_i\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ when W is not eventually periodic and $w_{i+1}-w_{i}\in \{2,3\}$ for all i.

In [15], using methods from ergodic theory, a longstanding conjecture of Erdős (see [5, Page 305]) about sumsets in large subsets of the natural numbers was resolved. In this paper, we extend this result to several important classes of amenable groups, including all finitely generated virtually nilpotent groups and all abelian groups $(G,+)$ with the property that the subgroup $2G := \{g+g : g\in G\}$ has finite index. We prove that in any group G from the above classes, any $A\subset G$ with positive upper Banach density contains a shifted product set of the form $\{tb_ib_j\colon i<j\}$, for some infinite sequence $(b_n)_{n\in \mathbb {N}}$ and some $t\in G$. In fact, we show this result for all amenable groups that posses a property which we call square absolute continuity. Our results provide answers to several questions and conjectures posed in [13].

We establish the restricted sumset analog of the celebrated conjecture of Sárközy on additive decompositions of the set of nonzero squares over a finite field. More precisely, we show that if $q>13$ is an odd prime power, then the set of nonzero squares in $\mathbb {F}_q$ cannot be written as a restricted sumset $A \hat {+} A$, extending a result of Shkredov. More generally, we study restricted sumsets in multiplicative subgroups over finite fields as well as restricted sumsets in perfect powers (over integers) motivated by a question of Erdős and Moser. We also prove an analog of van Lint–MacWilliams’ conjecture for restricted sumsets, which appears to be the first analogue of Erdős--Ko–Rado theorem in a family of Cayley sum graphs.

Given a positive integer m, let $\mathbb {Z}_m$ be the set of residue classes mod m. For $A\subseteq \mathbb {Z}_m$ and $n\in \mathbb {Z}_m$, let $\sigma _A(n)$ be the number of solutions to the equation $n=x+y$ with $x,y\in A$. Let $\mathcal {H}_m$ be the set of subsets $A\subseteq \mathbb {Z}_m$ such that $\sigma _A(n)\geq 1$ for all $n\in \mathbb {Z}_m$. Let

$$ \begin{align*} \ell_m=\min\limits_{A\in \mathcal{H}_m}\bigg\lbrace m^{-1}\sum_{n\in \mathbb{Z}_m}\sigma_A(n)\bigg\rbrace. \end{align*} $$

Ding and Zhao [‘A new upper bound on Ruzsa’s numbers on the Erdős–Turán conjecture’, Int. J. Number Theory 20 (2024), 1515–1523] showed that $\limsup _{m\rightarrow \infty }\ell _m\le 192$. We prove

$$ \begin{align*} \limsup\limits_{m\rightarrow\infty}\ell_m\leq 144 \end{align*} $$

and investigate parallel results on subtractive bases of $ \mathbb {Z}_m$.

For $E \subset \mathbb {N}$, a subset $R \subset \mathbb {N}$ is E-intersective if for every $A \subset E$ having positive relative density, $R \cap (A - A) \neq \varnothing $. We say that R is chromatically E-intersective if for every finite partition $E=\bigcup _{i=1}^k E_i$, there exists i such that $R\cap (E_i-E_i)\neq \varnothing $. When $E=\mathbb {N}$, we recover the usual notions of intersectivity and chromatic intersectivity. We investigate to what extent the known intersectivity results hold in the relative setting when $E = \mathbb {P}$, the set of primes, or other sparse subsets of $\mathbb {N}$. Among other things, we prove the following: (1) the set of shifted Chen primes $\mathbb {P}_{\mathrm {Chen}} + 1$ is both intersective and $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (2) there exists an intersective set that is not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (3) every $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set is intersective; (4) there exists a chromatically $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set which is not intersective (and therefore not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective).

For $g \geqslant 2$, we show that the number of positive integers at most X which can be written as sum of two base g palindromes is at most ${X}/{\log^c X}$. This answers a question of Baxter, Cilleruelo and Luca.

A set $S\subset {\mathbb {N}}$ is a Sidon set if all pairwise sums $s_1+s_2$ (for $s_1, s_2\in S$, $s_1\leqslant s_2$) are distinct. A set $S\subset {\mathbb {N}}$ is an asymptotic basis of order 3 if every sufficiently large integer $n$ can be written as the sum of three elements of $S$. In 1993, Erdős, Sárközy and Sós asked whether there exists a set $S$ with both properties. We answer this question in the affirmative. Our proof relies on a deep result of Sawin on the $\mathbb {F}_q[t]$-analogue of Montgomery's conjecture for convolutions of the von Mangoldt function.

For a subset $A$ of an abelian group $G$, given its size $|A|$, its doubling $\kappa =|A+A|/|A|$, and a parameter $s$ which is small compared to $|A|$, we study the size of the largest sumset $A+A'$ that can be guaranteed for a subset $A'$ of $A$ of size at most $s$. We show that a subset $A'\subseteq A$ of size at most $s$ can be found so that $|A+A'| = \Omega (\!\min\! (\kappa ^{1/3},s)|A|)$. Thus, a sumset significantly larger than the Cauchy–Davenport bound can be guaranteed by a bounded size subset assuming that the doubling $\kappa$ is large. Building up on the same ideas, we resolve a conjecture of Bollobás, Leader and Tiba that for subsets $A,B$ of $\mathbb{F}_p$ of size at most $\alpha p$ for an appropriate constant $\alpha \gt 0$, one only needs three elements $b_1,b_2,b_3\in B$ to guarantee $|A+\{b_1,b_2,b_3\}|\ge |A|+|B|-1$. Allowing the use of larger subsets $A'$, we show that for sets $A$ of bounded doubling, one only needs a subset $A'$ with $o(|A|)$ elements to guarantee that $A+A'=A+A$. We also address another conjecture and a question raised by Bollobás, Leader and Tiba on high-dimensional analogues and sets whose sumset cannot be saturated by a bounded size subset.

Two sets $A,B$ of positive integers are called exact additive complements if $A+B$ contains all sufficiently large integers and $A(x)B(x)/x\rightarrow 1$. For $A=\{a_1<a_2<\cdots \}$, let $A(x)$ denote the counting function of A and let $a^*(x)$ denote the largest element in $A\bigcap [1,x]$. Following the work of Ruzsa [‘Exact additive complements’, Quart. J. Math. 68 (2017) 227–235] and Chen and Fang [‘Additive complements with Narkiewicz’s condition’, Combinatorica 39 (2019), 813–823], we prove that, for exact additive complements $A,B$ with ${a_{n+1}}/ {na_n}\rightarrow \infty $,

$$ \begin{align*}A(x)B(x)-x\geqslant \frac{a^*(x)}{A(x)}+o\bigg(\frac{a^*(x)}{A(x)^2}\bigg) \quad\mbox{as } x\rightarrow +\infty.\end{align*} $$

We also construct exact additive complements $A,B$ with ${a_{n+1}}/{na_n}\rightarrow \infty $ such that

$$ \begin{align*}A(x)B(x)-x\leqslant \frac{a^*(x)}{A(x)}+(1+o(1))\bigg(\frac{a^*(x)}{A(x)^2}\bigg)\end{align*} $$

for infinitely many positive integers x.

Let $S=\{s_{1}, s_{2}, \ldots \}$ be an unbounded sequence of positive integers with $s_{n+1}/s_{n}$ approaching $\alpha $ as $n\rightarrow \infty $ and let $\beta>\max (\alpha , 2)$. We show that for all sufficiently large positive integers l, if $A\subset [0, l]$ with $l\in A$, $\gcd A=1$ and $|A|\geq (2-{k}/{\lambda \beta })l/(\lambda +1)$, where $\lambda =\lceil {k}/{\beta }\rceil $, then $kA\cap S\neq \emptyset $ for $2<\beta \leq 3$ and $k\geq {2\beta }/{(\beta -2)}$ or for $\beta>3$ and $k\geq 3$.

In our paper, we study multiplicative properties of difference sets $A-A$ for large sets $A \subseteq {\mathbb {Z}}/q{\mathbb {Z}}$ in the case of composite q. We obtain a quantitative version of a result of A. Fish about the structure of the product sets $(A-A)(A-A)$. Also, we show that the multiplicative covering number of any difference set is always small.

For a nonempty set A of integers and an integer n, let $r_{A}(n)$ be the number of representations of n in the form $n=a+a'$, where $a\leqslant a'$ and $a, a'\in A$, and $d_{A}(n)$ be the number of representations of n in the form $n=a-a'$, where $a, a'\in A$. The binary support of a positive integer n is defined as the subset S(n) of nonnegative integers consisting of the exponents in the binary expansion of n, i.e., $n=\sum_{i\in S(n)} 2^i$, $S(-n)=-S(n)$ and $S(0)=\emptyset$. For real number x, let $A(-x,x)$ be the number of elements $a\in A$ with $-x\leqslant a\leqslant x$. The famous Erdős-Turán Conjecture states that if A is a set of positive integers such that $r_A(n)\geqslant 1$ for all sufficiently large n, then $\limsup_{n\rightarrow\infty}r_A(n)=\infty$. In 2004, Nešetřil and Serra initially introduced the notation of “bounded” property and confirmed the Erdős-Turán conjecture for a class of bounded bases. They also proved that, there exists a set A of integers satisfying $r_A(n)=1$ for all integers n and $|S(x)\bigcup S(y)|\leqslant 4|S(x+y)|$ for $x,y\in A$. On the other hand, Nathanson proved that there exists a set A of integers such that $r_A(n)=1$ for all integers n and $2\log x/\log 5+c_1\leqslant A(-x,x)\leqslant 2\log x/\log 3+c_2$ for all $x\geqslant 1$, where $c_1,c_2$ are absolute constants. In this paper, following these results, we prove that, there exists a set A of integers such that: $r_A(n)=1$ for all integers n and $d_A(n)=1$ for all positive integers n, $|S(x)\bigcup S(y)|\leqslant 4|S(x+y)|$ for $x,y\in A$ and $A(-x,x) \gt (4/\log 5)\log\log x+c$ for all $x\geqslant 1$, where c is an absolute constant. Furthermore, we also construct a family of arbitrarily spare such sets A.

Arithmetic quasidensities are a large family of real-valued set functions partially defined on the power set of $\mathbb {N}$, including the asymptotic density, the Banach density and the analytic density. Let $B \subseteq \mathbb {N}$ be a nonempty set covering $o(n!)$ residue classes modulo $n!$ as $n\to \infty $ (for example, the primes or the perfect powers). We show that, for each $\alpha \in [0,1]$, there is a set $A\subseteq \mathbb {N}$ such that, for every arithmetic quasidensity $\mu $, both A and the sumset $A+B$ are in the domain of $\mu $ and, in addition, $\mu (A + B) = \alpha $. The proof relies on the properties of a little known density first considered by Buck [‘The measure theoretic approach to density’, Amer. J. Math. 68 (1946), 560–580].

We prove three results concerning the existence of Bohr sets in threefold sumsets. More precisely, letting G be a countable discrete abelian group and $\phi _1, \phi _2, \phi _3: G \to G$ be commuting endomorphisms whose images have finite indices, we show that

1. (1) If $A \subset G$ has positive upper Banach density and $\phi _1 + \phi _2 + \phi _3 = 0$ , then $\phi _1(A) + \phi _2(A) + \phi _3(A)$ contains a Bohr set. This generalizes a theorem of Bergelson and Ruzsa in $\mathbb {Z}$ and a recent result of the first author.

2. (2) For any partition $G = \bigcup _{i=1}^r A_i$ , there exists an $i \in \{1, \ldots , r\}$ such that $\phi _1(A_i) + \phi _2(A_i) - \phi _2(A_i)$ contains a Bohr set. This generalizes a result of the second and third authors from $\mathbb {Z}$ to countable abelian groups.

3. (3) If $B, C \subset G$ have positive upper Banach density and $G = \bigcup _{i=1}^r A_i$ is a partition, $B + C + A_i$ contains a Bohr set for some $i \in \{1, \ldots , r\}$ . This is a strengthening of a theorem of Bergelson, Furstenberg and Weiss.

All results are quantitative in the sense that the radius and rank of the Bohr set obtained depends only on the indices $[G:\phi _j(G)]$ , the upper Banach density of A (in (1)), or the number of sets in the given partition (in (2) and (3)).

We establish analogues for trees of results relating the density of a set ${E \subset \mathbb {N}}$, the density of its set of popular differences and the structure of E. To obtain our results, we formalize a correspondence principle of Furstenberg and Weiss which relates combinatorial data on a tree to the dynamics of a Markov process. Our main tools are Kneser-type inverse theorems for sets of return times in measure-preserving systems. In the ergodic setting, we use a recent result of the first author with Björklund and Shkredov and a stability-type extension (proved jointly with Shkredov); we also prove a new result for non-ergodic systems.

Let $h \geq 2$ be a positive integer. We introduce the concept of minimal restricted asymptotic bases and obtain some examples of minimal restricted asymptotic bases of order h.

A Sidon set is a subset of an Abelian group with the property that the sums of two distinct elements are distinct. We relate the Sidon sets constructed by Bose to affine subspaces of $ \mathbb {F} _ {q ^ 2} $ of dimension one. We define Sidon arrays which are combinatorial objects giving a partition of the group $\mathbb {Z}_{q ^ 2} $ as a union of Sidon sets. We also use linear recurring sequences to quickly obtain Bose-type Sidon sets without the need to use the discrete logarithm.

Let $\mathbb {N}$ be the set of all nonnegative integers. For $S\subseteq \mathbb {N}$ and $n\in \mathbb {N}$ , let $R_S(n)$ denote the number of solutions of the equation $n=s_1+s_2$ , $s_1,s_2\in S$ and $s_1<s_2$ . Let A be the set of all nonnegative integers which contain an even number of digits $1$ in their binary representations and $B=\mathbb {N}\setminus A$ . Put $A_l=A\cap [0,2^l-1]$ and $B_l=B\cap [0,2^l-1]$ . We prove that if $C \cup D=[0, m]\setminus \{r\}$ with $0<r<m$ , $C \cap D=\emptyset $ and $0 \in C$ , then $R_{C}(n)=R_{D}(n)$ for any nonnegative integer n if and only if there exists an integer $l \geq 1$ such that $m=2^{l}$ , $r=2^{l-1}$ , $C=A_{l-1} \cup (2^{l-1}+1+B_{l-1})$ and $D=B_{l-1} \cup (2^{l-1}+1+A_{l-1})$ . Kiss and Sándor [‘Partitions of the set of nonnegative integers with the same representation functions’, Discrete Math. 340 (2017), 1154–1161] proved an analogous result when $C\cup D=[0,m]$ , $0\in C$ and $C\cap D=\{r\}$ .

For a set A of positive integers and any positive integer n, let $R_{1}(A, n)$ , $R_{2}(A,n)$ and $R_{3}(A,n)$ denote the number of solutions of $a+a^{\prime }=n$ with $a, a^{\prime }\in A$ and the additional restriction that $a<a^{\prime }$ for $R_{2}$ and $a\leq a^{\prime }$ for $R_{3}$ . We consider Problem 6 of Erdős et al. [‘On additive properties of general sequences’, Discrete Math. 136 (1994), 75–99] about locally small and locally large values of $R_{1}, R_{2}$ and $R_{3}$ .