Sidon sets for linear forms (Q2672000)

A classical Sidon set is a set of numbers \(A\) (one usually considers \(A \subset \mathbb Z\)) such that there are no non-trivial solutions to the equation \[ a+b=c+d ,\quad a,b,c,d \in A. \] A trivial solution is one for which \(\{a,b \}= \{c,d \}\). Sidon sets are well-studied objects in the field of additive combinatorics. In this paper the author considers a generalisation of Sidon sets for linear forms of arbitrary length. Let \(\mathbb F\) be a field and \(h \in \mathbb N\). Fix a linear form \(\phi : \mathbb F^h \rightarrow \mathbb F\) (in fact the author considers linear forms in an even more general setting of vector spaces over finite fields) \[ \phi(x_1, \dots,x_h)= c_1x_1+ \dots + c_hx_h, \] where \(c_i \in \mathbb F\) for all \(1 \leq i \leq h\). A stricter notion of Sidonness is given for such a linear form; a set \(A \subset \mathbb F\) is said to be \(\phi\)-Sidon if, for \(a_1,\dots,a_h,a_1',\dots,a_h' \in A \), \[ \phi(a_1, \dots,a_h)= \phi(a_1', \dots,a_h') \iff (a_1,\dots a_h)=(a_1',\dots a_h'). \] The goal of this paper is to classify which linear forms \(\phi\) admit \(\phi\)-Sidon sets. For instance, one may consider the classical Sidon question, which corresponds to the linear form \(\phi(x_1,x_2)=x_1+x_2\). Because of the trivial solutions \[ a+b=b+a, \] there are no \(\phi\)-Sidon sets \(A\) with cardinality strictly greater than \(1\). This highlights that the property of being \(\phi\)-Sidon is stricter than the classical property of being a Sidon set, with the order that elements in the sum occur now taken into account. The main result of this paper gives a classification for which linear forms admit infinite \(\phi\)-Sidon sets. Whether or not such sets exists depends on whether or not the the linear form has what the author calls \textit{Property N}. This essentially means that all of the subsequence sums determined by the sequence of coefficients \(c_1,\dots, c_h\) must be distinct.