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On n-Sums in an Abelian Group

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2015

WEIDONG GAO
Affiliation:
Center for Combinatorics, LPMC-TJKLC, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China (e-mail: wdgao1963@aliyun.com)
DAVID J. GRYNKIEWICZ
Affiliation:
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA (e-mail: diambri@hotmail.com)
XINGWU XIA
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang 471022, PR China (e-mail: xxwsjtu@aliyun.com)

Abstract

Let G be an additive abelian group, let n ⩾ 1 be an integer, let S be a sequence over G of length |S| ⩾ n + 1, and let ${\mathsf h}$(S) denote the maximum multiplicity of a term in S. Let Σn(S) denote the set consisting of all elements in G which can be expressed as the sum of terms from a subsequence of S having length n. In this paper, we prove that either ng ∈ Σn(S) for every term g in S whose multiplicity is at least ${\mathsf h}$(S) − 1 or |Σn(S)| ⩾ min{n + 1, |S| − n + | supp (S)| − 1}, where |supp(S)| denotes the number of distinct terms that occur in S. When G is finite cyclic and n = |G|, this confirms a conjecture of Y. O. Hamidoune from 2003.

Type
Paper
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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