A variant of Davenport's constant

DOI10.1007/S12044-007-0010-4MaRDI QIDQ2384686zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors R. Thangadurai

Publication date 10 October 2007

Published in Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Mathematical Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1975

zbMATH Keywords

Davenport constantfinite Abelian groupszero-sum problems

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Sequences (mod (m)) (11B50) Other combinatorial number theory (11B75) Inverse problems of additive number theory, including sumsets (11P70) Finite abelian groups (20K01)

Abstract: Let p be a prime number. Let G be a finite abelian p-group of exponent n (written additively) and A be a non-empty subset of $]n[:=1,2,\mathrm{...},n$ such that elements of A are incongruent modulo p and non-zero modulo p. Let $kgeqD(G)/|A|$ be any integer where D(G) denotes the well-known Davenport's constant. In this article, we prove that for any sequence g_1, g_2, ..., g_k (not necessarily distinct) in G, one can always extract a subsequence g_{i_1}, g_{i_2}, ..., g_{i_ell} with $1leqellleqk$ such that �egin{equation*} sum_{j=1}^ell a_{j}g_{i_j} = 0 {in} G, end{equation*} where a_j in A for all j. We provide examples where this bound cannot be improved. Furthermore, for the cyclic groups, we prove some sharp results in this direction. In the last section, we explore the relation between this problem and a similar problem with prescribed length. The proof of Theorem~1 uses group-algebra techniques, while for the other theorems, we use elementary number theory techniques.

Review text

This paper discusses an interesting variant of the well known Davenport constant. Roughly speaking, Davenport's constant is defined as the minimum length such that a zero sum is guaranteed with any sequence with that length. Instead of simple zero sum, this variant adds weighted coefficients to the sum. Precisely, for a finite Abelian group \(G\) with exponent \(n\), let \(A\) be a subset of \(\{1,2,\dots,n\}\), the variant \(d_A(G)\) is defined as the minimum length \(t\) such that a weighted zero sum \[ \sum a_jg_{i_j}=0, \] is guaranteed with any sequence \(\{g_1,g_2,\dots,g_t\}\) in \(G\), where \(a_j\in A\). In the case of \(A\) a singleton set, the variant \(d_A(G)\) is just the Davenport constant. The main result of the paper is an upper bound \(D(G)/|A|\) of \(d_A(G)\) for finite Abelian \(p\)-groups \(G\). For general Abelian groups, the paper looks into cyclic groups with some results. In particular, if \(A\) consists of integers relatively prime to \(n\), then \(d_A(\mathbb{Z}_n)=1+\Omega(n)\) which could exceed \(D(\mathbb{Z}_n)/|A|\), where \(\Omega(n)\) is the number of prime power divisors of \(n\). The paper also looks into the relation between the variant \(d_A(G)\) and zero-sums of length \(|G|\). Let \(ZS_A(G)\) denote the minimum length such that a zero sum of length \(|G|\) is guaranteed, the paper proves the following equation \[ ZS_A(G)=|G|-1+d_A(G) \] holds in some special cases, such as \(G=\mathbb{Z}_p^d\) and some special \(A\)'s, where \(p\geq 2d+1\).

Recommendations

• Remarks on some zero-sum theorems
• Values of weighted Davenport constants
• Zero-sum constants involving weights
• Some combinatorial group invariants and their generalizations with weights
• Generalizations of some zero sum theorems

Cites work

• A combinatorial problem on finite Abelian groups. I
• A combinatorial problem on finite Abelian groups. II
• A generalization of a classical zero-sum problem
• Addition theorems for finite abelian groups
• Contributions to zero-sum problems
• Davenport constant with weights and some related questions
• On a theorem of J. E. Olson and an application. (Vanishing sums in finite abelian p-groups)

Cited in

(25)

• Warning's second theorem with relaxed outputs
• Arithmetic-progression-weighted subsequence sums
• Generalization of some weighted zero-sum theorems
• Zero-sum constants involving weights
• Some inverse problems in zero-sum theory
• Weighted Davenport's constant and the weighted EGZ theorem
• Analytic number theory in India during 2001-2010
• Remarks on the plus-minus weighted Davenport constant
• Weighted Zero-Sums for Some Finite Abelian Groups of Higher Ranks
• Values of weighted Davenport constants
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5190483 (Why is no real title available?)
• On weighted zero-sum sequences
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2163478 (Why is no real title available?)
• Multi-wise and constrained fully weighted Davenport constants and interactions with coding theory
• On some weighted zero-sum constants
• Extremal sequences for some weighted zero-sum constants for cyclic groups
• Inverse problems related to some weighted zero-sum constants for cyclic groups
• ON DAVENPORT'S CONSTANT
• A weighted generalization of two theorems of Gao
• Generalization of some weighted zero-sum theorems and related extremal sequence
• A generalization of the consecutive Davenport constant and the related inverse problem
• New families of weight sets yielding prescribed weighted zero-sum constants
• Some zero-sum constants with weights
• Davenport constant with weights
• The Erdős-Ginzberg-Ziv theorem with units

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