Additive Decompositions of Subgroups of Finite Fields

We say that a set $S$ is additively decomposed into two sets $A$ and $B$, if $S = \{a+b : a\in A, \ b \in B\}$. Here we study additively decompositions of multiplicative subgroups of finite fields. In particular, we give some improvements and generalisations of results of C. Dartyge and A. Sarkozy on additive decompositions of quadratic residues and primitive roots modulo $p$. We use some new tools such the Karatsuba bound of double character sums and some results from additive combinatorics

Counting Additive Decompositions of Quadratic Residues in Finite Fields

We say that a set $S$ is additively decomposed into two sets $A$ and $B$ if $S = \{a+b : a\in A, \ b \in B\}$. A. S\'ark\"ozy has recently conjectured that the set $Q$ of quadratic residues modulo a prime $p$ does not have nontrivial decompositions. Although various partial results towards this conjecture have been obtained, it is still open. Here we obtain a nontrivial upper bound on the number of such decompositions

Restricted sumsets in multiplicative subgroups

We establish the restricted sumset analog of the celebrated conjecture of S\'{a}rk\"{o}zy on additive decompositions of the set of nonzero squares over a finite field. More precisely, we show that if $q>13$ is an odd prime power, then the set of nonzero squares in $\mathbb{F}_q$ cannot be written as a restricted sumset $A \hat{+} A$, extending a result of Shkredov. More generally, we study restricted sumsets in multiplicative subgroups over finite fields as well as restricted sumsets in perfect powers (over integers) motivated by a question of Erd\H{o}s and Moser. We also prove an analog of van Lint-MacWilliams' conjecture for restricted sumsets, equivalently, an analog of Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem in a family of Cayley sum graphs.Comment: 23 page