On the number of subsequences with a given sum in a finite abelian group (Q547793)

Summary: Suppose \(G\) is a finite abelian group and \(S\) is a sequence of elements in \(G\). For any element \(g\) of \(G\), let \(N_g(S)\) denote the number of subsequences of S with sum \(g\). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lower bound for \(N_g(S)\). In particular, we prove that either \(N_g(S) = 0\) or \(N_g(S) \geq 2^{|S| - D(G)+1}\), where \(D(G)\) is the smallest positive integer \(\ell \) such that every sequence over \(G\) of length at least \(\ell \) has a nonempty zero-sum subsequence. We also characterize the structures of the extremal sequences for which the equality holds for some groups.