On subset sums of \(\mathbb{Z}_n^{\times}\) which are equally distributed modulo \(n\) (Q6110322)

Let \(A\) be a finite (multi)set of numbers, a number of the form \(\sum_{a \in A} \varepsilon_a a\) with \(\varepsilon \in \{0,1\}\) is called a subset sum of \(A\). It is a common problem to study the set or the multiset of all numbers of this form. The current paper addresses the problem whether the multiset of subset sums is equidistributed. On result is that for \(n\) an odd integer, the multiset of non-empty subset-sums of \(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}^{\times}\) is equidistributed. That is, every class modulo \(n\) appears \((2^{\varphi(n)}-1)/n\) times. The authors then address the converse problem and study, for instance for \(n\) and odd prime-power (but also in some other cases), the problem when a subset \(A\) of \(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}^{\times}\) has an equidistributed multiset of non-empty subset sums. Roughly speaking, this happens when the set is a union of certain generalized geometric progressions.