On growth of the set \(A(A+1)\) in arbitrary finite fields (Q2205111)

The sum-product problem is concerned with proving that, for a given set \(A\), at least one of the sum set \(A+A\) or the product set \(AA\) is considerably larger than \(A\). This paper is concerned with a variant of this problem in the finite field setting, i.e. with \(A \subset \mathbb F_q\). The last few years have seen significant quantitative progress for the finite field sum-product problem, primarily as a consequence of \textit{M. Rudnev} [Combinatorica 38, No. 1, 219--254 (2018; Zbl 1413.51001)] point-plane incidence theorem. At the time of writing, the current record is that bound \[ \max \{ |A+A|, |AA| \} \gg |A|^{11/9 -o(1)},\tag{1} \] due to [\textit{M. Rudnev} et al., Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 148, No. 4, 1467--1479 (2020; Zbl 1442.11029)]. However, the bound (1) holds subject to a condition which upper bounds the size of \(A\) with respect to the characteristic \(p\) of the field \(\mathbb F_q\). This condition is necessary (i.e. it cannot be removed completely), since one must at least rule out the possibility that \(A\) is close to being a subfield of \(\mathbb F_q\). However, it becomes rather restrictive for finite fields with small characteristic. For such a situation, the best results are quantitatively weaker than (1), and stem from older work, based on the so-called additive pivot technique. In [\textit{L. Li} and the reviewer, SIAM J. Discrete Math. 25, No. 3, 1285--1296 (2011; Zbl 1238.11009)], it was proven that \[ \max \{ |A+A|, |AA| \} \gg |A|^{12/11 -o(1)},\tag{2} \] provided that \(A\) does not have large intersection with any dilate of a subfield. In this paper, the author considers an important variant of the sum-product problem where the goal is to prove good lower bounds for product sets with shifts. Techniques from [\textit{L. Li} and \textit{O. Roche-Newton} (loc. cit.)] are used to prove the following statement, which is the main result of the paper under review. Theorem. Suppose that \(A \subset \mathbb F_q\) such that \[ | A \cap cG| \leq \max \{ |G|^{1/2}, |A|^{25/26} \} \] holds for any subfield \(G \subset \mathbb F_q\) and any \(c \in \mathbb F_q\). Then, for any \(\alpha \in \mathbb F_q \setminus \{0 \}\), \[ |A(A+ \alpha)| \gtrsim \min \{ |A|^{1+1/52}, q^{1/48}|A|^{1-1/48} \}. \] The \(\gtrsim\) notation is used here to absorb constant and logarithmic factors.