Estimating the cardinality of a difference subset of the discrete multi-torus \(\mathbb Z_3^n\) (Q690555)

From the text: In this paper, the authors obtain an upper estimate for the cardinality of a subset of the discrete torus over a field of three elements of which any four points do not form a nonsingular parallelogram. Let \(\text{card}(A)\) be the cardinality of \(A\); we set \(A(n) = \max_A \text{card}(A)\), where the maximum is taken over all difference subsets \(A\) of \(\mathbb Z_3^n\). In this paper, they show that \[ \root 3\of 2\cdot 3^{n/3}\leq A(n)\leq \root 3\of 3\cdot 3^{n/3}; \] this estimate gives an exact order of growth of \(A(n)\) and shows how widely the cardinalities of difference sets of discrete tori may differ. .