NUMBER THEORY CIA – COMPONENT 2 (MAT551C)

TOPIC – SUMSETS

INTRODUCTION:
Additive number theory is defined as the study of sum of sets of integers. Let
k ≥ 2, and let A1, A2, A3, A4,. . ., Ak be a set of integers.

Then the sumset can be written as:

A1 + A2 + A3 + A4 + . . . + Ak

This set of integers is of the form where a1+ a2 + a3 + a4 + . . . + ak, where ai ꜪAi
for i = 1, 2, 3, . . ., k. Then we can represent the sumset by kA.
The k-fold sumset kA is the set of all sums of k elements of A, with repetitions
allowed. In general, if we represent the have two subsets A and B which
belongs to an abelian group G, then we can write the sumset equation as:
A + B = {a + b: a ꜪA, b ꜪB}

In a similar fashion we can write the difference set i.e.,

A - B = {a - b: a ꜪA, b ꜪB}

If A = {a0, a1, a2, . . ., ak-1) is a finite set of integers such that a0 < a1 . . . <ak-1, then
we can define d(A) = {a1 - a0, a2 - a0, ak-1 – a0} also A(N)= {a’0,a’1, a’2, . . ., a’k-1).
It follows that, │kA│= │k A(N) │. The set A(N)is called the normal form of the
set
There are a lot of theorems related to the sumset. Some important ones are
Nathanson’s Theorem.

INVERSE THEOREM:

Inverse problem in additive number theory tells us about the problem in which
we take some steps to deduce properties of the set A from properties of the
sumset kA.

Some important inverse theorems are Freiman, Kneser and Vosper. The
Vosper’s theorem is an inverse of the Cauchy-Davenport theorem which states
that if A and B are nonempty sets of congruence classes modulo p, then
│A + B│ ≥ min (p, │A│ + │B│ - 1)
This Cauchy-Davenport theorem is a direct theorem in additive number theory.
There are a number of mathematical topics like Graph Theory, Gaussian Laws
Ramsey’s Theorem and many others which can be linked with Additive Number
Theory to produce other results.

SHASHANK SEKHAR
1640253
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