Sets characterized by missing sums and differences in dilating polytopes (Q2517127)

As an interesting feature in investigation of the behavior of sums and differences of sets in the one-dimensional lattice \(\mathbb Z\) is the fact that the sum-dominant, balanced, and difference-dominant sets, as well as sets with even greater constraints on missing sums and differences are ubiquitous on the line. The aim of the present paper is to extend these results to higher dimensional lattices \({\mathbb Z}^D\) for any \(D>0\). As a high-dimensional analogue of the intervals are taken arbitrary dilating \(D\)-dimensional convex polytopes \(P\) in \({\mathbb R}^D\) with lattice point vertices in \({\mathbb Z}^D\). For a subset \(S\subset{\mathbb R}^D\), let \(L(S)\) denote the set of lattice points contained in \(S\). Furthermore, let \(nS\) denote the dilation of \(S\) by a factor of \(n\) about the origin. The authors focus to the proportion \(\rho_n^{s,d}\) of subsets \(A\subset L(nP)\) such that \(|(L(nP))+L(nP)|\setminus (A+A)=s\) and \(|(L(nP))-L(nP)|\setminus (A-A)=2d\) for any prescribed \(s,d\in{\mathbb N}_0\). The characteristic geometry of polytopes \(P\) having a significant effect on the limiting behavior of \(\rho_n^{s,d}\) is called locally point symmetric. Here a convex polytope \(P\) with \(m\) vertices is called locally point symmetric if its vertices can be partitioned into \(m/2\) pairs of strictly antipodal vertices such that for each pair of vertices \(\{{\mathbf u},{\mathbf v}\}\) we have \(C({\mathbf u})-{\mathbf u}={\mathbf v}-C({\mathbf v})\), where \(C({\mathbf v})\) denotes the supporting cone \(\bigcap_{S_i\in {\mathcal S}(P,{\mathbf v})} S_i\) with \({\mathcal S}(P,{\mathbf v})\) standing for the set of closed half-spaces determined by hyperplanes forming the support of facets of \(P\) and containing \(\mathbf v\). The first main result of the paper says that given \(s,d\in{\mathbb N}_0\), there exists a constant \(c_{s,d}>0\) such that, for sufficiently large \(n\), at least \(c_{s,d}2^{|L(nP)|}\) of the subsets of \(L(nP)\) have exactly \(s\) missing sums and exactly \(2d\) missing differences if and only if \(P\) is locally point symmetric. The second main result shows that weakening the condition on the number of missing differences in direction ``at least \(2d\) missing differences'' preserves a positive proportion in the limit independently of the geometry of \(P\).