The weighted Davenport constant of a group and a related extremal problem. II (Q6116406)

In the context of zero sum problems like the determination of weighted Davenport constants or Harborth constants for finite abelian groups, the authors had introduced the following extremal problem earlier [Part I, Electron. J. Comb. 26, No. 4, Research Paper P4.51, 19 p. (2019; Zbl 1439.11054)]. In this short paper, the authors prove that \(f^{(D)}(p,k) \leq 4^{k^2} p^{1/k}\) for any integer \(k>1\) and large enough primes \(p\). Here, \(f^{(D)}(p,k)\) denotes the smallest size of a non-empty subset \(A \subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^{\ast}\) such that the \(A\)-weighted Davenport constant of \(\mathbb{F}_p\) is at the most \(k\). This size is taken to be infinite, if there is no such \(A\). The proofs use probabilistic ideas as well. A consequence of the main result is that there exists a subset \(A\) of \(\mathbb{F}_p^{\ast}\) such that \(|A| \leq 4^{k^2} p^{1/k}\) such that for any \(x_1, \cdots, x_k \in \mathbb{F}_p^{\ast}\), there exist \(a_1, \cdots, a_k \in A\) such that \(\sum_{i=1}^k a_ix_i=0\).