Adjacent comparison bounds and extremal sets for Ruzsa numbers

Let $m$ be a positive integer and $\mathbb{Z}_m$ the residue class ring modulo $m$. The Ruzsa number $R_m$ is defined to be the least integer $r$ such that there is a subset $\mathcal{A}$ of $\mathbb{Z}_m$ satisfying $ 1\le \sigma_{\mathcal{A}}(n)\le r $ for any $n\in \mathbb{Z}_m$, where $$ \sigma_{\mathcal{A}}(n) =\#\big\{(a,a')\in\mathcal A^2: a+a'\equiv n\pmod{m}\big\}. $$ Motivated by a 2024 conjecture of Ding and Zhao, we prove $ | R_{m+1}-R_m|\le 144. $ Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a subset of $\mathbb{Z}_m$ satisfying $1\le \sigma_{\mathcal{A}}(n)\le R_m$ for any $n\in \mathbb{Z}_m$. We also give nontrivial bounds for the size of $\mathcal{A}$. Additionally, we provide exact values of $R_m$ for all $m\le 100$, which substantially extends the table of values given by S\'andor and Yang in 2017. Finally, we pose several related problems and prove some partial results.