Sets of integers that do not contain long arithmetic progressions (Q540042)

Summary: Combining ideas of Rankin, Elkin, Green and Wolf, we give constructive lower bounds for \(r_k(N)\), the largest size of a subset of \(\{1,2,\dots,N\}\) that does not contain a \(k\)-element arithmetic progression: For every \(\varepsilon>0\), if \(N\) is sufficiently large, then \[ r_3(N)\geq N \left(\frac{6\cdot 2^{3/4} \sqrt{5}}{e \,\pi^{3/2}}-\varepsilon\right) \exp\left({-\sqrt{8\log N}+\tfrac14\log\log N}\right), \] \[ r_k(N) \geq N \, C_k\,\exp\left({-n 2^{(n-1)/2} \sqrt[n]{\log N}+\tfrac{1}{2n}\log\log N}\right), \] where \(C_k>0\) is an unspecified constant, \(\log=\log_2\), \(\exp(x)=2^x\), and \(n=\lceil\log k\rceil\). These are currently the best lower bounds for all \(k\), and are an improvement over previous lower bounds for all \(k\neq 4\).