Long regularly-spaced and convex sequences in dense sets of integers (Q2229162)

The purpose of this paper is to study a generalization of the concept of arithmetic progression from the Ramsey theoretical point of view. The generalization is the following. Let \(a_1,\dots,a_N\) an strictly increasing sequence of real numbers, and let \(L\geq 1\) be a fixed real. Then the previous sequence is said to be \(L\)-regular if there exists a real \(X\) such that, for all \(i\in\{0,\dots,N\}\), \(X\leq a_{i+1}-a_{i}\leq LX\). This notion generalizes the one of arithmetic progression, as in this case the difference is constant: \(a_{i+1}-a_{i}=d\) for every choice of \(d\). Motivated by (already) classical results in additive combinatorics (as Szeméredi's theorem) the main contribution of the author is the study of the following function: for a given finite set of real numbers \(A\) and a fixed positive real number \(L\), let \[R_L(A)=\max_{L\text{-regular } A'} \{|A'|: A'\subseteq A\}.\] In particular, the study is mostly centered in the case \(L=2\). The author studies both Ramsey questions (for any partition of the interval \(\{1,\dots,N\}=A_1\cup\dots\cup A_r\) the author shows that for \(N\) large enough, \(\max\{R_2(A_i)\}\) is large), and the problem in the sumset setting (it is well known that the sumset \(A-A\) is better behaved than \(A\) concerning the largest arithmetic progression contained in it).