Remarks on the inverse Littlewood conjecture

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Bloom, Thomas F., Green, Ben
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Bloom, Thomas F.
Green, Ben
author_facet Bloom, Thomas F.
Green, Ben
contents The Littlewood conjecture, proven by Konyagin and McGehee-Pigno-Smith in the 1980s, states that if $A\subset \mathbb{Z}$ is a finite set of integers with $\lvert A\rvert=N$ then $\| \widehat{1_A}\|_1\geq c\log N$ for some absolute constant $c > 0$. We explore what structure $A$ must have if $\| \widehat{1_A}\|_1\leq K\log N$ for some constant $K$. Under such an assumption we prove, for instance, that $A$ contains a subset $A'\subseteq A$ with $\lvert A\rvert \geq N^{0.99}$ such that $\lvert A'+A'\rvert \ll K^{O(1)}\lvert A'\rvert$. As a consequence, for any $k\geq 3$, if $N$ is sufficiently large depending on $k$ and $K$, then $A$ must contain an arithmetic progression of length $k$. A byproduct of our analysis is a (slightly) improved bound for the constant $c$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_16482
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Remarks on the inverse Littlewood conjecture
Bloom, Thomas F.
Green, Ben
Number Theory
Classical Analysis and ODEs
Combinatorics
The Littlewood conjecture, proven by Konyagin and McGehee-Pigno-Smith in the 1980s, states that if $A\subset \mathbb{Z}$ is a finite set of integers with $\lvert A\rvert=N$ then $\| \widehat{1_A}\|_1\geq c\log N$ for some absolute constant $c > 0$. We explore what structure $A$ must have if $\| \widehat{1_A}\|_1\leq K\log N$ for some constant $K$. Under such an assumption we prove, for instance, that $A$ contains a subset $A'\subseteq A$ with $\lvert A\rvert \geq N^{0.99}$ such that $\lvert A'+A'\rvert \ll K^{O(1)}\lvert A'\rvert$. As a consequence, for any $k\geq 3$, if $N$ is sufficiently large depending on $k$ and $K$, then $A$ must contain an arithmetic progression of length $k$. A byproduct of our analysis is a (slightly) improved bound for the constant $c$.
title Remarks on the inverse Littlewood conjecture
topic Number Theory
Classical Analysis and ODEs
Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16482