Shakan's conjecture on arbitrarily large improvements for sum-free subsets

Let AZ>0A\subset\mathbb{Z}_{>0} be a set of size nn. A subset of AA is sum-free if it contains no x,y,zx,y,z satisfying

x+y=z.x+y=z.

Let s(A)s(A) denote the largest size of a sum-free subset of AA.

Shakan's conjecture. For every positive integer SS, there exists NSZN_S\in\mathbb{Z} such that

s(A)n+S3s(A)\geq\frac{n+S}{3}

for every nNSn\geq N_S.

The question asks whether the standard lower bound for the largest sum-free subset can be improved by an arbitrarily large additive constant for sufficiently large sets. Bourgain proved a fixed improvement in broad circumstances, including the bound s(A)(n+2)/3s(A)\geq(n+2)/3 for sets with coprime elements apart from A={1,2}A=\{1,2\}, but the asserted arbitrary improvement remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

George Shakan, “On the largest sum-free subset problem in the integers”, arXiv:2207.14210 (2022).

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