Direct zero-sum problems for certain groups of rank three (Q1634428)

Let \(G\) be a finite additive abelian group and for a positive integer \(s\), let \(C_{s}\) be the cyclic group of order \(s\). The constant \(\eta(G)\) is defined as the smallest non-negative integer \(t\) such that every sequence of \(t\) elements from \(G\) contains a non-empty subsequence such that the sum of its terms is \(0\) and its length is at most the exponent of the group. In this paper the authors prove that \(\eta(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2m}) = 6m + 2\) and \(\eta(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2mn}) = 4m + 2mn\), where \(m \ge 1\) and \(n \ge 2\) are integers. The constant \(\mathbf{s}(G)\), which is called Erdős-Ginzburg-Ziv constant, is defined as the smallest non-negative integer \(t\) such that every sequence of \(t\) elements from \(G\) contains a non-empty subsequence such that the sum of its terms is \(0\) and its length is equal to the exponent of the group. Moreover, we say the positive integer \(m\) has the Property \(D\) if every sequence over \(C_{m}^{2}\) of length \(4m - 4\) which does not contain a subsequence of length \(m\) whose terms sum is \(0\) is of the form \(T^{m-1}\) for some sequence \(T\) over \(C_{m}^{2}\). The authors prove that \(\mathbf{s}(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2m}) = 8m + 1\). Furthermore, if \(m\) has Property \(D\), then \(\mathbf{s}(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2mn}) = 4m + 4mn - 1\), where \(m \ge 1\) and \(n \ge 2\) are integers. As a corollary, they get that if \(n = 1\) or \(m\) has Property \(D\), then \(\mathbf{s}(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2m}) = \eta(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2m}) + \text{exp}(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2m}) - 1\), which proves a conjecture of \textit{W. Gao} and \textit{A. Geroldinger} [Expo. Math. 24, No. 4, 337--369 (2006; Zbl 1122.11013)] in this special case. For a given integer \(k \ge 1\), the constant \(\mathbf{D}_{k}(G)\), which is called multiwise Davenport constant, is defined as the smallest non-negative integer \(t\) such that every sequence of length at lest \(t\) from \(G\) contains at least \(k\) non-empty disjoint subsequences, each of them has terms sum is \(0\). The authors compute \(\mathbf{D}_{k}(C_{2} \oplus C_{2m} \oplus C_{2mn})\) for all \(k,m,n \ge 1\).