Maximal Sidon sets and matroids (Q1043980)

Let \(G\) be an additive abelian group. A set \(X \subset G\) is a generalized Sidon set of order \((h, k)\) or a \(B_{(h,k)}\) - set if whenever \(\{(a_{i}, m_{i}): i \in I\}\) and \(\{(b_{j}, n_{j}): j \in J\}\) are multisets of size \(h\), with elements in \(X\) and \(\sum_{i \in I}m_{i}a_{i} = \sum_{j \in J}n_{j}b_{j}\), then their multiset intersection has size at least \(k\). In this paper the authors obtained the following results about \(B_{(h,k)}\) - sets. If \(h \geq 2\) and \(h/2 \leq k \leq h - 1\), then the set of all finite \(B_{(h,h-1)}\) - sets contained in \(X\) is the same as the set of all finite \(B_{(h,k)}\) - sets contained in \(X\). Moreover, if \(X\) is a finite \(B_{(2h-1,h-1)}\) - set contained in \(G\), then the maximal \(B_{(h,h-1)}\) - subsets of \(X\) have the same cardinality. They also proved that for \(1 \leq k < h/2\), if there exist a finite \(B_{(h,k)}\) - set contained in \(\mathbb{Z}\) which is not a \(B_{(h,k+1)}\) - set, then there exists arbitrary large such finite set. The main result of this paper is that if \(X\) is a finite \(B_{(2h-1,h-1)}\) - set, then the set of all \(B_{(h,h-1)}\) sets contained in \(X\) forms a matroid.