The prime-orbit decomposition conjecture for vanishing sums of roots of unity

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Let μ2k+1\mu_{2k+1} denote the set of (2k+1)(2k+1)-th roots of unity. For every prime factor pp of 2k+12k+1 and βp∈[0:2k+1p−1]\beta_p\in\left[0:\frac{2k+1}{p}-1\right], let

Op,βp:={ζβp,ζ2k+1p+βp,ζ2(2k+1)p+βp,…,ζ(p−1)(2k+1)p+βp}O_{p,\beta_p}:=\left\{\zeta^{\beta_p},\zeta^{\frac{2k+1}{p}+\beta_p},\zeta^{\frac{2(2k+1)}{p}+\beta_p},\dots,\zeta^{\frac{(p-1)(2k+1)}{p}+\beta_p}\right\}

be the corresponding pp-orbit of (2k+1)(2k+1)-th roots of unity, whose elements sum to zero. Prime-orbit decomposition conjecture. Any subset of μ2k+1\mu_{2k+1} with sum zero is a disjoint union

⨿jOpj,βpj,\amalg_j O_{p_j,\beta_{p_j}},

where each Opj,βpjO_{p_j,\beta_{p_j}} is a pjp_j-orbit and pjp_j is a prime factor of 2k+12k+1. The claim proposes a general structural description of vanishing subsets of roots of unity; the supplied text gives no evidence that it has been proved or disproved, so its status remains open.

References

Primary source

Kai Wan, Daniela Tuninetti, Mingyue Ji and Pablo Piantanida, “Combination Networks with End-user-caches: Novel Achievable and Converse Bounds under Uncoded Cache Placement”, arXiv:1701.06884 (2021).

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