A variant of Tao's method with application to restricted sumsets (Q999721)

The authors modify an argument of \textit{T. Tao} [Math. Res. Lett. 12, No. 1, 121--127 (2005; Zbl 1080.42002)] to prove that for \(p\) a prime, \(\emptyset \neq A,B \subset \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}\), and \(S \subset \mathbb{Z}/p \mathbb{Z}\) one has \[ |\{a+b : a \in A, \, b \in B, \, a-b \notin S\}|\geq \min \{p, |A| + |B| - 2 |S| - 1 \}. \] This inequality contains classical results as a special case. Moreover, ways to strengthen this result and its relation to a stronger result of \textit{H. Pan} and \textit{Z. Sun} [ J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 100, No. 2, 387--393 (2002; Zbl 1020.11080)], obtained via different methods, are discussed.