The Littlewood-Gowers problem (Q2474568)

The paper is devoted to Fourier analysis on a compact abelian group \(G\); by \(\widehat G\) is denoted its dual. The main result formulated and proved in \S\S 2--5 reads as follows: Let \(f\in A(G)=\{f\in L^1(G):\|\widehat f\|_1<\infty\}\), endowed with the norm \(\|f\|_{A(G)}:=\|\widehat f\|_1\), and \(\Gamma=\{\gamma\in\widehat G: |\widehat f(\gamma)|\geq\epsilon\|f\|_\infty\}\) for some \(\epsilon\in(0,1]\). Then there is a set of characters \(\Lambda\) such that \(\Gamma\subset\langle\Lambda\rangle\) and \(|\Lambda|\ll\epsilon^{-1}(1+\log\|f\|_{a(G)}\|f\|_\infty^{-1})\). In \S\S 6--7 this theorem is localized. In \S\S 8--11 these results are applied to improve the following estimate, due to Green and Konyagin, in the Littlewood-Growers problem on the smallness of \(\|\chi_A\|_{A(\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z)}\): Let \(p\) be a prime number and \(A\subset\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z\) has density bounded away from \(0\) and \(1\) by an absolute constant, then \[ \|\chi_A\|_{A(\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z)}\gg\left(\frac{\log p}{\log\log p} \right)^{1/3}. \] The author's estimate is \[ \left(\frac{\log p}{(\log\log p)^3} \right)^{1/2}. \] This is closer to the Green-Konyagin-Littlewood conjecture that the estimate should be \(\log p\).