Additive number theory

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Additive number theory is the subfield of number theory concerning the study of subsets of integers and their behavior under addition. More abstractly, the field of additive number theory includes the study of abelian groups and commutative semigroups with an operation of addition. Additive number theory has close ties to combinatorial number theory and the geometry of numbers. Two principal objects of study are the sumset of two subsets A and B of elements from an abelian group G,

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and the h-fold sumset of A,

Additive number theory

The field is principally devoted to consideration of direct problems over (typically) the integers, that is, determining the structure of hA from the structure of A: for example, determining which elements can be represented as a sum from hA, where A is a fixed subset. [1] Two classical problems of this type are the Goldbach conjecture (which is the conjecture that 2P contains all even numbers greater than two, where P is the set of primes) and Waring's problem (which asks how large must h be to guarantee that hAk contains all positive integers, where

is the set of k-th powers). Many of these problems are studied using the tools from the Hardy-Littlewood circle method and from sieve methods. For example, Vinogradov proved that every sufficiently large odd number is the sum of three primes, and so every sufficiently large even integer is the sum of four primes. Hilbert proved that, for every integer k > 1, every non-negative integer is the sum of a bounded number of k-th powers. In general, a set A of nonnegative integers is called a basis of order h if hA contains all positive integers, and it is called an asymptotic basis if hA contains all sufficiently large integers. Much current research in this area concerns properties of general asymptotic bases of finite order. For example, a set A is called a minimal asymptotic basis of order h if A is an asymptotic basis of order h but no proper subset of A is an asymptotic basis of order h. It has been proved that minimal asymptotic bases of order h exist for all h, and that there also exist asymptotic bases of order h that contain no minimal asymptotic bases of order h. Another question to be considered is how small can the number of representations of n as a sum of h elements in an asymptotic basis can be. This is the content of the Erdős–Turán conjecture on additive bases.

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In mathematics, a free abelian group or free Z-module is an abelian group with a basis, or, equivalently, a free module over the integers. Being an abelian group means that it is a set with an addition operation that is associative, commutative, and invertible. A basis is a subset such that every element of the group can be uniquely expressed as a linear combination of basis elements with integer coefficients. For instance, the integers with addition form a free abelian group with basis {1}.

In additive number theory, the Schnirelmann density of a sequence of numbers is a way to measure how "dense" the sequence is. It is named after Russian mathematician Lev Schnirelmann, who was the first to study it.

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In additive number theory, the Fermat polygonal number theorem states that every positive integer is a sum of at most nn-gonal numbers. That is, every positive integer can be written as the sum of three or fewer triangular numbers, and as the sum of four or fewer square numbers, and as the sum of five or fewer pentagonal numbers, and so on. That is, the n-gonal numbers form an additive basis of order n.

In additive combinatorics, the sumset of two subsets A and B of an abelian group G is defined to be the set of all sums of an element from A with an element from B. That is,

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In mathematics, a multiple arithmetic progression, generalized arithmetic progression or a semilinear set, is a generalization of an arithmetic progression equipped with multiple common differences. Whereas an arithmetic progression is generated by a single common difference, a generalized arithmetic progression can be generated by multiple common differences. For example, the sequence is not an arithmetic progression, but is instead generated by starting with 17 and adding either 3 or 5, thus allowing multiple common differences to generate it.

In number theory, zero-sum problems are certain kinds of combinatorial problems about the structure of a finite abelian group. Concretely, given a finite abelian group G and a positive integer n, one asks for the smallest value of k such that every sequence of elements of G of size k contains n terms that sum to 0.

In additive number theory, an additive basis is a set of natural numbers with the property that, for some finite number , every natural number can be expressed as a sum of or fewer elements of . That is, the sumset of copies of consists of all natural numbers. The order or degree of an additive basis is the number . When the context of additive number theory is clear, an additive basis may simply be called a basis. An asymptotic additive basis is a set for which all but finitely many natural numbers can be expressed as a sum of or fewer elements of .

In additive number theory and combinatorics, a restricted sumset has the form

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Dysons transform number theory

Dyson's transform is a fundamental technique in additive number theory. It was developed by Freeman Dyson as part of his proof of Mann's theorem, is used to prove such fundamental results of Additive Number Theory as the Cauchy-Davenport theorem, and was used by Olivier Ramaré in his work on the Goldbach conjecture that proved that every even integer is the sum of at most 6 primes. The term Dyson's transform for this technique is used by Ramaré. Halberstam and Roth call it the τ-transformation.

The Jurkat–Richert theorem is a mathematical theorem in sieve theory. It is a key ingredient in proofs of Chen's theorem on Goldbach's conjecture. It was proved in 1965 by Wolfgang B. Jurkat and Hans-Egon Richert.

The Erdős–Turán conjecture is an old unsolved problem in additive number theory posed by Paul Erdős and Pál Turán in 1941.

In mathematics, Minkowski's second theorem is a result in the geometry of numbers about the values taken by a norm on a lattice and the volume of its fundamental cell.

In the branch of mathematics known as additive combinatorics, Kneser's theorem can refer to one of several related theorems regarding the sizes of certain sumsets in abelian groups. These are named after Martin Kneser, who published them in 1953 and 1956. They may be regarded as extensions of the Cauchy–Davenport theorem, which also concerns sumsets in groups but is restricted to groups whose order is a prime number.

In mathematics, the Davenport constantD(G) is an invariant of a group studied in additive combinatorics, quantifying the size of nonunique factorizations. Given a finite abelian group G is defined as the smallest number, such that every sequence of elements of that length contains a non-empty sub-sequence adding up to 0. In symbols, this is

References

  1. Nathanson (1996) II:1