Zero sums in restricted sequences (Q2032710)

Let \(G\) be a finite abelian group. A sequence over \(G\) is a finite unorder sequence with terms from \(G\) and repetition allowed. Let \(A\subset \mathbb Z\setminus \{0\}\). A nonempty sequence \(S=g_1\cdot\ldots\cdot g_{\ell}\) over \(G\) is said to be a \(A\)-weighted zero-sum sequence if there exists \((w_1,\ldots,w_{\ell})\in A^{\ell}\) such that \(\sum_{i=1}^{\ell}w_ig_i=0\). Furthermore, we denote \(\mathsf h(S)=\max\{|\{i\in [1,\ell]\colon g_i=h\}|\colon h\in G\}\). We define \(\mathsf D_A(G)\) to be the smallest integer \(t\) such that every sequence \(S\) over \(G\) of length \(\ge t\) has a \(A\)-weighted zero-sum subsequence and define \(\mathsf s_A^{(k)}\) to be the smallest integer \(t\) such that every sequence \(S\) over \(G\) of length \(\ge t\) and with \(\mathsf h(S)\le k\) has a \(A\)-weighted zero-sum subsequence of length \(\exp(G)\). In particular, if \(A=\{1\}\), then \(\mathsf D_A(G)=\mathsf D(G)\) is the classical Davenport constant, \(\mathsf s_A^{(\exp(G))}(G)\) is the classical Erdős-Ginzburg-Ziv constant, and \(\mathsf s_A^{(1)}(G)\) is the Harborth constant. In this paper, the authors considered the above invariants \(\mathsf D_A(G)\) and \(\mathsf s_A^{(k)}(G)\) for cyclic groups \(G\). They also investigated the same problem for random sequences with some natural choices of the set \(A\) for cyclic groups.