A superadditivity and submultiplicativity property for cardinalities of sumsets

For finite sets of integers A1, . . . ,An we study the cardinality of the n-fold sumset A1 + · · · + An compared to those of (n − 1)-fold sumsets A1 + · · · + Ai−1 + Ai+1 + · · · + An. We prove a superadditivity and a submultiplicativity property for these quantities. We also examine the case when the addition of elements is restricted to an addition graph between the sets

Sumset and Inverse Sumset Inequalities for Differential Entropy and Mutual Information

The sumset and inverse sumset theories of Freiman, Pl\"{u}nnecke and Ruzsa, give bounds connecting the cardinality of the sumset $A+B=\{a+b\;;\;a\in A,\,b\in B\}$ of two discrete sets $A,B$, to the cardinalities (or the finer structure) of the original sets $A,B$. For example, the sum-difference bound of Ruzsa states that, $|A+B|\,|A|\,|B|\leq|A-B|^3$, where the difference set $A-B= \{a-b\;;\;a\in A,\,b\in B\}$. Interpreting the differential entropy $h(X)$ of a continuous random variable $X$ as (the logarithm of) the size of the effective support of $X$, the main contribution of this paper is a series of natural information-theoretic analogs for these results. For example, the Ruzsa sum-difference bound becomes the new inequality, $h(X+Y)+h(X)+h(Y)\leq 3h(X-Y)$, for any pair of independent continuous random variables $X$ and $Y$. Our results include differential-entropy versions of Ruzsa's triangle inequality, the Pl\"{u}nnecke-Ruzsa inequality, and the Balog-Szemer\'{e}di-Gowers lemma. Also we give a differential entropy version of the Freiman-Green-Ruzsa inverse-sumset theorem, which can be seen as a quantitative converse to the entropy power inequality. Versions of most of these results for the discrete entropy $H(X)$ were recently proved by Tao, relying heavily on a strong, functional form of the submodularity property of $H(X)$. Since differential entropy is {\em not} functionally submodular, in the continuous case many of the corresponding discrete proofs fail, in many cases requiring substantially new proof strategies. We find that the basic property that naturally replaces the discrete functional submodularity, is the data processing property of mutual information.Comment: 23 page

Sumsets and entropy revisited

The entropic doubling $\sigma_{\operatorname{ent}}[X]$ of a random variable $X$ taking values in an abelian group $G$ is a variant of the notion of the doubling constant $\sigma[A]$ of a finite subset $A$ of $G$, but it enjoys somewhat better properties; for instance, it contracts upon applying a homomorphism. In this paper we develop further the theory of entropic doubling and give various applications, including: (1) A new proof of a result of P\'alv\"olgyi and Zhelezov on the ``skew dimension'' of subsets of $\mathbf{Z}^D$ with small doubling; (2) A new proof, and an improvement, of a result of the second author on the dimension of subsets of $\mathbf{Z}^D$ with small doubling; (3) A proof that the Polynomial Freiman--Ruzsa conjecture over $\mathbf{F}_2$ implies the (weak) Polynomial Freiman--Ruzsa conjecture over $\mathbf{Z}$.Comment: 37 page

Self similar sets, entropy and additive combinatorics

This article is an exposition of recent results on self-similar sets, asserting that if the dimension is smaller than the trivial upper bound then there are almost overlaps between cylinders. We give a heuristic derivation of the theorem using elementary arguments about covering numbers. We also give a short introduction to additive combinatorics, focusing on inverse theorems, which play a pivotal role in the proof. Our elementary approach avoids many of the technicalities in the original proof but also falls short of a complete proof. In the last section we discuss how the heuristic argument is turned into a rigorous one.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures; submitted to Proceedings of AFRT 2012. v5: more typos correcte

Sampling-based proofs of almost-periodicity results and algorithmic applications

We give new combinatorial proofs of known almost-periodicity results for sumsets of sets with small doubling in the spirit of Croot and Sisask, whose almost-periodicity lemma has had far-reaching implications in additive combinatorics. We provide an alternative (and L^p-norm free) point of view, which allows for proofs to easily be converted to probabilistic algorithms that decide membership in almost-periodic sumsets of dense subsets of F_2^n. As an application, we give a new algorithmic version of the quasipolynomial Bogolyubov-Ruzsa lemma recently proved by Sanders. Together with the results by the last two authors, this implies an algorithmic version of the quadratic Goldreich-Levin theorem in which the number of terms in the quadratic Fourier decomposition of a given function is quasipolynomial in the error parameter, compared with an exponential dependence previously proved by the authors. It also improves the running time of the algorithm to have quasipolynomial dependence instead of an exponential one. We also give an application to the problem of finding large subspaces in sumsets of dense sets. Green showed that the sumset of a dense subset of F_2^n contains a large subspace. Using Fourier analytic methods, Sanders proved that such a subspace must have dimension bounded below by a constant times the density times n. We provide an alternative (and L^p norm-free) proof of a comparable bound, which is analogous to a recent result of Croot, Laba and Sisask in the integers.Comment: 28 page