A variant of Tao's method with application to restricted sumsets

Abstract

In this paper, we develop Terence Tao's harmonic analysis method and apply it to restricted sumsets. The well known Cauchy-Davenport theorem asserts that if $A$ and $B$ are nonempty subsets of $Z/pZ$ with $p$ a prime, then $|A+B|\ge minp,|A|+|B|-1$, where $A+B=a+b:a\in A,b\in B$. In 2005, Terence Tao gave a harmonic analysis proof of the Cauchy-Davenport theorem, by applying a new form of the uncertainty principle on Fourier transform. We modify Tao's method so that it can be used to prove the following extension of the Erdos-Heilbronn conjecture: If $A,B,S$ are nonempty subsets of $Z/pZ$ with $p$ a prime, then $|a+b:a\in A,b\in B,a-bnot\in S|\ge minp,|A|+|B|-2|S|-1$.