On sets of large exponential sums (Q610521)

The author of the present paper applies the Fourier transform \(\hat{f}(r) = \sum_{n\in\mathbb{Z}_N} f(n) e^{-2\pi inr/N}\) where \(\mathbb{Z}_{N}\) is the set of residues modulo \(N\). The main result is the following (Theorem 3): Suppose that \(\delta\) and \(\alpha\) are real numbers, \(0<\alpha\leq\delta\), \(A\) is an arbitrary subset of \(\mathbb{Z}_{N}\) of cardinality \(\delta N\), \(k\geq 2\) is even, and let \(R_{\alpha }\) be the set \(\left \{ r\in \mathbb{Z}_{N}:|\hat{A}(r)|\geq \alpha N \right \}\). If \(B\subseteq R_{\alpha }\setminus \left \{ 0 \right \}\) is an arbitrary set, then the number \[ T_{k}(B):= \left|\left\{(r_1, r_2, \ldots,r_k,r'_1, r^{'}_{2},\ldots,r^{'}_{k}) \in B^{2k}:r_1+r_2+\ldots +r_k=r'_1+r'_2+\ldots +r'_k\right\}\right| \] is at least \(\frac{\delta \alpha^{2k}|B|^{2k}}{(2^{4k}\delta^{2k})}\). Some applications to problems in combinatorial number theory are given.