On a theorem of Hegyvári and Hennecart (Q2181503)

This paper considers the concept growth in the Heisenberg group, generalising and improving several results of \textit{N. Hegyvári} and \textit{F. Hennecart}, mainly from their paper [Forum Math. 30, No. 1, 227--236 (2018; Zbl 1430.20049)]. We explain one such result in detail, in order to give a flavour of the content of the paper under review. Given a set \(A \subset \mathbb F_q\), let \([A,A,0]\) denote the set \[ [A,A,0]:=\left\{ \begin{pmatrix} 1 & a & 0\\ 0 & 1 & b \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix} : a,b \in A \right\}. \] This paper proves that the product set \([A,A,0] \cdot [A,A,0]\) satisfies the bound \[ |[A,A,0] \cdot [A,A,0]| \gg q \cdot |[A,A,0]| \cdot \frac{|A|^3}{E_+(A)}, \] provided that \(A\) is sufficiently large with respect to \(q\). Here, \(E_+(A)\) denote the additive energy of \(A\). This improves a result from the paper cited above by the factor of \(|A|^3/E_+(A)\), and so it gives an actual improvement unless the additive energy is of the maximum possible order \(|A|^3\). Some other results in this paper include new bounds for growth in the Heisenberg group over \(\mathbb F_q\) in higher dimensions, and for sufficiently small multiplicative subgroups in \(\mathbb F_p\). A new bound for the size of \(|[A,A,0] \cdot [A,A,0]|\) when \(A \subset \mathbb C\) is also given.