Maximum number of sum-free colorings in finite abelian groups (Q1659538)

Let \(G\) be an abelian group. A set \(A \subset G\) is called sum-free if the equation \(a + b = c\) has no solution where \(a, b, c \in A\). Let \(\mu(G)\) be the size of largest sum-free sets of \(G\). A coloring of the elements of a given set \(A \subset G\) with \(r\) colors is said to be sum-free \(r\)-coloring if each of the color classes is a sum-free set. For a subset \(A \subset G\), let \(\kappa_{r}(A)\) be the number of all sum-free \(r\) colorings of \(A\) and let the maximum of \(\kappa_{r}(A)\) over all \(A \subset G\) be \(\kappa_{r,G}\). In this paper, the authors study how large \(\kappa_{r,G}\) can be for \(r \geq 2\). Let \(G\) be a finite abelian group of sufficiently large order \(n\) such that \(n\) has a prime divisor of the form \(3k+2\). The authors prove that in this case \(\kappa_{r,G} = r^{\mu(G)}\) and \(\kappa_{r,G} = \kappa_{r}(A)\) if and only if \(A\) is a largest sum-free set in \(G\) when \(r = 2,3\). On the other hand, they also give a description of sets \(A \subset G\) which maximize the number of sum-free \(r\) colorings for \(r = 4,5\). The proofs are based on the container method, which comes from [\textit{B. Green} and \textit{I. Z. Ruzsa}, Isr. J. Math. 147, 157--188 (2005; Zbl 1158.11311)].