Some remarks on products of sets in the Heisenberg group and in the affine group (Q2300662)

An informal phrasing of an old theme is the statement that ``addition and multiplication cannot co-exist''. Almost four decades ago, Erdős and Szemerédi made a precise conjecture on this `sum-product phenomenon' implying that for a subset \(A\) of \(\mathbb{R}\), the sum set \(A+A\) and the product set \(A.A\) cannot both be simultaneously small. Various special cases have been proved and analogues in other situations like finite fields have been well investigated. In the present paper, the author uses representation theory in \(\mathbb{F}_p\) to obtain bounds for products of large subsets from the (nonabelian!) Heisenberg group and the affine group over \(\mathbb{F}_p\). In particular, he obtains some connections between the sum-product phenomenon and growth in the Heisenberg group.