ON A PROBLEM RELATED TO ONE OF LITTLEWOOD AND OFFORD (Q3977053)

Let \(z_ 1,\ldots,z_ n\) be complex numbers of modulus at least one. Littlewood and Offord considered bounds for the number of sums \(\sum^ n_{i=1}\varepsilon_ iz_ i\), with \(\varepsilon_ i=1\) or \(-1\), lying in the interior of a given disc of radius one. Erdős (by investigating the real case) discovered that this is basically a combinatorial problem related to Sperner's Theorem. Later Kleitman and Katona got best possible results for the complex case and for generalizations to vectors in an arbitrary archimedean normed space. The present paper considers the analogous problem in the field of \(p\)- adic rationals, the first non-archimedean case. Also, giving more credit to analytic number theory, Sperner's Theorem is eliminated from the argument, and exponential sums play the crucial role in the proof. Actually, the best possible result for even \(n\) is almost immediate via exponential sums, the case of odd \(n\) requires very tight reasonings.