Freiman's theorem in finite fields via extremal set theory

• Authors: Ben Green;Terence Tao
• Venue: Combinatorics, Probability and Computing
• Year: 2009

Using various results from extremal set theory (interpreted in the language of additive combinatorics), we prove an asymptotically sharp version of Freiman's theorem in $\F_2^n$: if $A \subseteq \F_2^n$ is a set for which |A + A| ≤ K|A| then A is contained in a subspace of size $2^{2K + O(\sqrt{K}\log K)}|A|$; except for the $O(\sqrt{K} \log K)$ error, this is best possible. If in addition we assume that A is a downset, then we can also cover A by O(K46) translates of a coordinate subspace of size at most |A|, thereby verifying the so-called polynomial Freiman–Ruzsa conjecture in this case. A common theme in the arguments is the use of compression techniques. These have long been familiar in extremal set theory, but have been used only rarely in the additive combinatorics literature.