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arxiv: 0810.3223 · v1 · submitted 2008-10-17 · 🧮 math.NT

The critical number of finite abelian groups

classification 🧮 math.NT
keywords abeliancriticalfinitegroupsmathsfnumbereverymathbb
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Let G be an additive, finite abelian group. The critical number $\mathsf{cr}(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest positive integer $\ell$ such that for every subset $S \subset G \setminus \{0\}$ with $|S| \ge \ell$ the following holds: Every element of $G$ can be written as a nonempty sum of distinct elements from $S$. The critical number was first studied by P. Erd\H{o}s and H. Heilbronn in 1964, and due to the contributions of many authors the value of $\mathsf {cr}(G)$ is known for all finite abelian groups $G$ except for $G \cong \mathbb{Z}/pq\mathbb{Z}$ where $p,q$ are primes such that $p+\lfloor2\sqrt{p-2}\rfloor+1<q<2p$. We determine that $\mathsf {cr}(G)=p+q-2$ for such groups.

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