Counting sets with small sumset and applications

We study the number of k-element sets A? {1,...,N} with |A+A| ≤ K|A| for some (fixed) K > 0. Improving results of the first author and of Alon, Balogh, Samotij and the second author, we determine this number up to a factor of 2 ^{o ( k )} N ^{o (1)} for most N and k. As a consequence of this and a further new result concerning the number of sets A??/N? with |A+A| ≤ c|A|², we deduce that the random Cayley graph on ?/N? with edge density ½ has no clique or independent set of size greater than (2+o(1)) log₂ N, asymptotically the same as for the Erd?s-Rényi random graph. This improves a result of the first author from 2003 in which a bound of 160log₂ N was obtained. As a second application, we show that if the elements of A ? ? are chosen at random, each with probability 1/2, then the probability that A+A misses exactly k elements of ? is equal to (2+O(1))^?k/2 as k → ∞.     

A contribution to the Zarankiewicz problem

Given positive integers let z(m,n,s,t) be the maximum number of ones in a (0,1) matrix of size m×n that does not contain an all ones submatrix of size s×t. We show that if s?2 and t?2, then for every k=0,…,s-2,

z(m,n,s,t)?(s-k-1)^1/tnm^1-1/t+kn+(t-1)m^1+k/t.