Iterated sumsets and subsequence sums

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Abstract: Let GcongmathbbZ/m1mathbbZimesldotsimesmathbbZ/mrmathbbZ be a finite abelian group with m1midldotsmidmr=exp(G). The Kemperman Structure Theorem characterizes all subsets A,,BsubseteqG satisfying |A+B|<|A|+|B| and has been extended to cover the case when |A+B|leq|A|+|B|. Utilizing these results, we provide a precise structural description of all finite subsets AsubseteqG with |nA|leq(|A|+1)n3 when ngeq3 (also when G is infinite), in which case many of the pathological possibilities from the case n=2 vanish, particularly for large ngeqexp(G)1. The structural description is combined with other arguments to generalize a subsequence sum result of Olson asserting that a sequence S of terms from G having length |S|geq2|G|1 must either have every element of G representable as a sum of |G|-terms from S or else have all but |G/H|2 of its terms lying in a common H-coset for some HleqG. We show that the much weaker hypothesis |S|geq|G|+exp(G) suffices to obtain a nearly identical conclusion, where for the case H is trivial we must allow all but |G/H|1 terms of S to be from the same H-coset. The bound on |S| is improved for several classes of groups G, yielding optimal lower bounds for |S|. We also generalize Olson's result for |G|-term subsums to an analogous one for n-term subsums when ngeqexp(G), with the bound likewise improved for several special classes of groups. This improves previous generalizations of Olson's result, with the bounds for n optimal.









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