Structure of large incomplete sets in abelian groups (Q532130)

Let \(G\) be a finite Abelian group and \(A\) be a subset of \(G\). Let \(S_A\) denote the set \(\{ \sum_{a\in B} a \mid B \subseteq A \}\) of all subset sums of \(A\). Following \textit{P. Erdős} [Acta Arith. 7, 345--354 (1962; Zbl 0106.03805)], the subset \(A\) of \(G\) is said to be complete if \(S_A=G\) and incomplete otherwise. The subset \(A\) of \(G\) is said to be subcomplete if there is a proper subgroup \(H\) of \(G\) such that \(| G/H| \) is a prime and \(S_{A\cap H}=H\). The critical number of \(G\), \(c(G)\), is the smallest integer \(m\) such that any subset \(A\subseteq G\setminus \{0\}\) with size \(m\) is complete. The exact value of \(c(G)\) is known for most groups, see \textit{G. T. Diderrich} and \textit{H. B. Mann} [Survey combin. Theory, Sympos. Colorado State Univ., Colorado 1971, 95--100 (1973; Zbl 0258.20051)], \textit{H. B. Mann} and \textit{Y. F. Wou} [Monatsh. Math. 102, 273--308 (1986; Zbl 0597.10049)], \textit{G. T. Diderrich} [J. Number Theory 7, 33--48 (1975; Zbl 0295.10042)], \textit{W. Gao} and \textit{Y. O. Hamidoune} [Acta Arith. 88, 233--237 (1999; Zbl 0935.11004)]. In the paper under review the leading idea of the author is that relatively large incomplete sets are subcomplete. Roughly speaking, Theorem 2.7 asserts that if the least prime divisor \(p\) of \(| G| \) is not too close to the trivial bound \(\sqrt n\), then any incomplete subset of size slightly more than \(\frac {5n}{6p}\) is subcomplete. This improves the previous bound \(\frac {n}{p+2}\) of \textit{W. Gao, Y. O. Hamidoune, A. Lladó} and \textit{O. Serra} [Combinatorica 23, 599--611 (2003; Zbl 1049.11022)]. As by-products, the author obtains new proofs of earlier \(c(G)\)-results for large groups. Theorem 2.9 gives an essentially best lower bound on \(| A| \) that guarantees subcompleteness. The main tool is Theorem 3.1 which asserts that if \(0<\varepsilon <1\) and \(A\) is a sufficiently large subset of \(G\), then \(S_A\) contains a subgroup of size at least \((1-\varepsilon )| A| \).