Extremal 3-product-free set conjecture for free semigroups

Let A\mathcal{A} be a finite set and let F\mathcal{F} be the free semigroup with alphabet A\mathcal{A}. If SFS\subset\mathcal{F} is 3-product-free and d(S)=1/3d^{\ast}(S)=1/3, consider the two types of label sets

{wF:the sum of the labels of letters in w is 1mod3},\{w\in\mathcal{F}:\text{the sum of the labels of letters in }w\text{ is }1\bmod 3\},

and

{wF:the sum of the labels of letters in w is 1,2mod6}.\{w\in\mathcal{F}:\text{the sum of the labels of letters in }w\text{ is }1,2\bmod 6\}.

Extremal 3-product-free set conjecture. One of the following holds: either the letters of A\mathcal{A} can be labelled by Z/3Z\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z} so that SS is contained in the first set, or the letters can be labelled by Z/6Z\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z} so that SS is contained in the second set.

This is the free-semigroup analogue of the classification of extremal 3-sum-free sets in the non-negative integers. The density bound is established, but the extremal structure for k=3k=3 is explicitly left open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Freddie Illingworth, Lukas Michel and Alex Scott, “The structure and density of k-product-free sets in the free semigroup”, arXiv:2305.05304 (2023).

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