Linear extension of the Erdős-Heilbronn conjecture

  • Authors:
  • Zhi-Wei Sun;Li-Lu Zhao

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Mathematics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, Peoples Republic of China;Department of Mathematics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

The famous Erdos-Heilbronn conjecture plays an important role in the development of additive combinatorial number theory. In 2007 Z.W. Sun made the following further conjecture (which is the linear extension of the Erdos-Heilbronn conjecture): For any finite subset A of a field F and nonzero elements a"1,...,a"n of F, we have|{a"1x"1+...+a"nx"n:x"1,...,x"n@?A,andx"ix"jifij}|=min{p(F)-@d,n(|A|-n)+1}, where the additive order p(F) of the multiplicative identity of F is different from n+1, and @d@?{0,1} takes the value 1 if and only if n=2 and a"1+a"2=0. In this paper we prove this conjecture of Sun when p(F)=n(3n-5)/2. We also obtain a sharp lower bound for the cardinality of the restricted sumset{x"1+...+x"n:x"1@?A"1,...,x"n@?A"n,andP(x"1,...,x"n)0}, where A"1,...,A"n are finite subsets of a field F and P(x"1,...,x"n) is a general polynomial over F.