An application of kissing number in sum-product estimates (Q722350)

\textit{P. Erdős} and \textit{E. Szemerédi} [in: Studies in pure mathematics. To the memory of Paul Turán. Basel-Boston-Stuttgart: Birkhäuser Verlag; Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. 213--218 (1983; Zbl 0526.10011)] conjectured that for a set \(X\) of integers, either the number of pairwise sums or the number of pairwise products is large, i.e. \(\max(| X+X| ,| X\cdot X|)\geq | X| ^{2-\varepsilon}\), for any \(\varepsilon>0\), if \(| X| \) is sufficiently large. They proved \(\max(| X+X| ,| X\cdot X|)>> | X| ^{1+\delta}\). This problem has grown into a research area in itself, the so-called ``sum-product problem'', and the problem has been extended to rings. The paper under review shows that \(\delta\) can be taken arbitrary close to \(1/3\) for quaternions, and also \(k\times k\) matrices with complex entries, if any 4 matrices \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\) of \(X\) either satisfy \(AB^{-1}=CD^{-1}\) or the block matrix \(\begin{pmatrix} A & C\\ B & D \end{pmatrix}\) is invertible. The proof is based on the exact value of the kissing number in 4 dimension, which is 24 [\textit{O. R. Musin}, Russ. Math. Surv. 58, No. 4, 794--795 (2003; Zbl 1059.52023); translation from Usp. Mat. Nauk 58, No. 4, 153--154 (2003)] and on bounds for \textit{H. Hadwiger}'s [Arch. Math. 8, 212--213 (1957; Zbl 0080.15501)] generalization of the kissing number for convex bodies, which uses only translates of the convex body.