Cubic symmetric polynomials yielding variations of the Erdős-Ginzburg-Ziv theorem (Q2439819)

This paper is motivated by the theorem of \textit{P. Erdős, A. Ginzburg and A. Ziv} [Bull. Res. Council Israel, 10F, 41--43 (1961; Zbl 0063.00009)]. The aim of this paper is to determine all symmetric polynomials \(\varphi\) of degree not exceeding \(3\) in \(\mathbb Z_p[x_1,x_2,\dots,x_p]\), where \(p\geq 3\) is the prime, satisfying the following two conditions: (i) every sequence in \(\mathbb Z_p\) of length \(2p-1\) contains a \(\varphi\)-zero subsequence, and (ii) the \(\varphi\)-zero free sequences in \(\mathbb Z_p\) of maximal length are all those containing exactly two distinct elements, where each element appears \(p-1\) times. The main result asserts that such polynomials are exactly those obtained from the linear symmetric polynomial \(s_1=x_1+x_2+\cdots+x_p\) by applying a certain construction.