On distance sets and product sets in vector spaces over finite rings (Q2442193)

The authors improve older results on lower bounds for the cardinality of special subsets of a finite vector space \(V\) over a finite ring \(\mathbb{Z}/q \mathbb{Z}\) where \(q =p^r\) is a fixed power of a sufficiently large prime \(p\). More precisely, they prove the following result and others of the same kind: Let \(n>0\) be an integer and let \(A\) be a subset of \(\mathbb{Z}/q \mathbb{Z}\) such that for some constant \(C>0\) \[ \text{card}(A) \geq C \cdot q^{1-\frac{1}{2r}} \] then there is some constant \(D>0\) such that \[ \text{card}(\Delta_q(A^n)) \geq D \cdot \min \left(q,\frac{\text{card}(A)^{2n-1}}{(r \cdot q^{2-\frac{1}{r}})^{n-1}} \right) \] Here \(\Delta_q(A^n)\) is the set of all sums of \(n\) squares \((x_i - y_j)^2\) for any \(x_i, y_j \) in \(A\). The method of proof uses graph-theoretic methods.