On the structure of finite sets with the same representation functions (Q2167503)

For any positive integer \(m\), let \(\mathbb{Z}_m\) be the set of residue classes modulo \(m\). For \(A \subset \mathbb{Z}_m\) and \(\bar{n}\in \mathbb{Z}_m\), let the representation function \(R_A(n)\) denote the number of solutions of the equation \(\bar{n} = \bar{a} +\bar{a}'\) with unordered pairs \((\bar{a}, \bar{a'})\in A\times A\). Let \(M\) be an odd integer with \(M\geq 3\) and \(m=2M\). In this paper, the authors determined the structures of \(A, B \subset \mathbb{Z}_m\) with \(A\cup B = \mathbb{Z}_m\) and \(|A\cap B| = 2\) such that \(R_A(n) = R_B(n)\) for all \(\bar{n}\in \mathbb{Z}_m\).