Alternating parity weak sequencing (Q6494523)

Let \((G,+)\) be a possibly non-abelian group, written additively. A subset \(S \subset G\) is sequenceable if there is an ordering \((y_{1}, y_{2},\ldots, y_{k})\) of its elements such that the partial sums \(s_{1}, s_{2},\ldots, s_{k}\) given by \(s_{0}=0\) and \(s_{i}=s_{i-1}+y_{i}\) for \(1 \leq i \leq k\), are all distinct, with the possible exception that we may have \(s_{0}=0=s_{k}\). This nomenclature is consistent with that of group sequencing introduced by \textit{R. J. Friedlander}, \textit{B. Gordon}, and \textit{M. D. Miller}, in [Proc. 9th southeast. Conf. on Combinatorics, graph theory, and computing, Boca Raton 1978, 307--321 (1978; Zbl 0407.20043)]. By the first author and \textit{M. A. Pellegrini}, in [Arch. Math. 115, No. 5, 479--488 (2020; Zbl 1530.20066)], it was proved that if the order of a group is \(pe\) then all sufficiently large subsets of the nonidentity elements are \(t\)-weakly sequenceable when \(p > 3\) is prime, \(e \leq 3\) and \(t \leq 6\).NEWLINENEWLINEIn the paper under review, inspired by this result, the authors show that, if \(G\) is the semidirect product of \(\mathbb{Z}_{p}\) and \(\mathbb{Z}_{2}\) and the subset \(S\) is balanced, then \(S\) admits, regardless of its size, an alternating parity \(t\)-weak sequencing whenever \(p > 3\) is prime and \(t\leq 8\). A subset of \(G\) is balanced if it contains the same number of even elements and odd elements and an alternating parity ordering alternates even and odd elements. Then, using a hybrid approach that combines both Ramsey theory and the probabilistic method, they also prove, for groups \(G\) that are semidirect products of a generic (nonnecessarily abelian) group \(N\) and \(\mathbb{Z}_{2}\), that all sufficiently large balanced subsets of the nonidentity elements admit an alternating parity \(t\)-weak sequencing. The same procedure works also for studying the weak sequenceability for generic sufficiently large (not necessarily balanced) sets. Here the authors have been able to prove that, if the size of a subset \(S\) of a group \(G\) is large enough and if \(0 \not \in S\), then \(S\) is \(t\)-weakly sequenceable.