On an application of higher energies to Sidon sets (Q6081369)

Sidon set was introduce]d by \textit{S. Sidon} [Math. Ann. 106, 536--539 (1932; Zbl 0004.21203)]. For a detailed survey about Sidon sets see \textit{K. O'Bryant} [Electron. J. Comb. DS11, 39 p. (2004; Zbl 1142.11312)]. Let Sid\((A)\) be the size of a maximal (by cardinality) Sidon subset of a set \( A\) contained in an abelian group \( G\). We specify the group operation by writing Sid\(^{+}(A)\) or Sid\(^{\times}(A)\). \textit{J. Komlós} et al. [Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hung. 26, 113--121 (1975; Zbl 0303.10058)] proved that for any \(A\subset \mathbb{R}\) one has \[ (1) \;\;\; \text{Sid}(A) \geq c \sqrt{\vert A\vert},\] where \(c>0\) is an absolute constant. \textit{O. Klurman} et al. [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 374, No. 11, 7967--7990 (2021; Zbl 1487.11086)] asked whether it is true that bound (1) can be improved either for Sid\(^{+}(A)\) or for Sid\(^{\times}(A)\), where \(A\) is any finite subset of the real numbers? Let Sid\(_{k}(A)\) stand for the size of a maximal subset of \(A\) having at most \(k\) representations of any non-zero element as a difference. Thus, Sid\(_{1}(A) =\) Sid\((A)\) and hence (1) cannot be improved for the quantity Sid\(_{k} (A)\). The main result of this paper is the following : For any finite set \(A\) and an arbitrary \(\epsilon >0\) there exists \( k = k(\epsilon)\) such that the higher energy \(E_{k} (A)\) is at most \(\vert A\vert ^{k+\epsilon}\) unless \( A\) has a very specific structure. \textit{O. Roche-Newton} and \textit{A. Warren} [Acta Math. Hung. 165, No. 2, 326--336 (2021; Zbl 1499.11039)] obtained a similar bound and another estimate of the same form that was obtained by Green-Peluse. The construction here is different from these counterexamples. As an application it is obtained that any finite subset \( A\) of the real numbers or the prime field either contains an additive Sidon-type subset of size \(\vert A\vert ^{\frac{1}{2}+c}\) or a multiplicative Sidon-type subset of size \(\vert A\vert ^{\frac{1}{2}+c}\).