A variant of Davenport's constant (Q2384686): Difference between revisions

This paper discusses an interesting variant of the well known Davenport constant. Roughly speaking, Davenport's constant is defined as the minimum length such that a zero sum is guaranteed with any sequence with that length. Instead of simple zero sum, this variant adds weighted coefficients to the sum. Precisely, for a finite Abelian group \(G\) with exponent \(n\), let \(A\) be a subset of \(\{1,2,\dots,n\}\), the variant \(d_A(G)\) is defined as the minimum length \(t\) such that a weighted zero sum \[ \sum a_jg_{i_j}=0, \] is guaranteed with any sequence \(\{g_1,g_2,\dots,g_t\}\) in \(G\), where \(a_j\in A\). In the case of \(A\) a singleton set, the variant \(d_A(G)\) is just the Davenport constant. The main result of the paper is an upper bound \(D(G)/|A|\) of \(d_A(G)\) for finite Abelian \(p\)-groups \(G\). For general Abelian groups, the paper looks into cyclic groups with some results. In particular, if \(A\) consists of integers relatively prime to \(n\), then \(d_A(\mathbb{Z}_n)=1+\Omega(n)\) which could exceed \(D(\mathbb{Z}_n)/|A|\), where \(\Omega(n)\) is the number of prime power divisors of \(n\). The paper also looks into the relation between the variant \(d_A(G)\) and zero-sums of length \(|G|\). Let \(ZS_A(G)\) denote the minimum length such that a zero sum of length \(|G|\) is guaranteed, the paper proves the following equation \[ ZS_A(G)=|G|-1+d_A(G) \] holds in some special cases, such as \(G=\mathbb{Z}_p^d\) and some special \(A\)'s, where \(p\geq 2d+1\).