Representation of integers as monochromatic sums of squares of primes (Q2239147)

For any integer \(k\geq 1\) and any set \(D\), a colouring of \(D\) in \(k\) colours is a family of \(k\) mutually disjoint subsets of \(D\) whose union is \(D\). For \(D\subseteq\mathbb{N}\), let \(s_D(k)\) be the smallest of the integers \(s\) such that for any colouring \(\{D_i : 1\leq i \leq k\}\) of \(D\) in \(k\) colours and each sufficiently large integer \(n\) there exists an integer \(i\in[1,k]\), which may depend on \(n\), so that \(n\) is expressible as a sum of at most \(s\) elements of \(D\) all belonging to \(D_i\). In the paper under review, the authors prove that when \(D\) is the set of squares of the prime numbers, for each \(k\geq 2\) one has the following upper bound \[ s_D(k)\leq k\,e^{\frac{(3\log 2+o(1))\log k}{\log\log k}}, \] where \(o(1)\ll(\log\log\log k)/\log\log k\) for all large enough \(k\). The idea to prove the above bound is to obtain, for all sufficiently large integers \(n\), suitable upper bounds for the \(2m\)-fold additive energy \(E_m(S)\) of subsets \(S\) of \(D\cap(n,4n]\) that satisfy \(|S| \geq |D\cap(n,4n]|/a\), where \(a\geq 1\) is a real number. More precisely, letting \(a\geq e^{e^2}\), the authors prove that for all sufficiently large integers \(n\) and any subset \(S\) of the squares of prime numbers in the interval \((n, 4n]\) with \(|S|\geq \sqrt{n}/(a\log n)\) one has \[ E_6(S)\leq \frac{|S|^{11}}{\sqrt{n}\log n}\,e^{\frac{(3\log 2+o(1))\log a}{\log\log a}}, \] where \(o(1)\ll(\log\log\log a)/\log\log a\) and the size of \(n\) depends only on \(a\) and certain absolute constants.