On the number of zero-sum subsequences (Q879349)

Let \(G\) be an additive abelian group and \(m\in\mathbb{N}\). With \(\Omega_m\) is denoted the set of sequences of elements from \(G\) of length \(m\). For \(S=(a_1,a_2,\dots, a_m)\in\Omega_m\), set \(\sigma(S) :=\sum^m_{i=1}a_i\). The subsequence \(S\) is zero-sum if \(\sigma(S)= 0\). Let \(f(S)\) denote the number of zero-sum subsequences of \(S\). In this paper all sequences \(S\) in \(G\) with \(2^{|S|-2}<f (S)<3\cdot 2^{|S|-3}\) are characterized, where \(|S|\) denotes the number of terms of \(S\).