Transversal Difference Numbers in Finite Abelian Quotients
arXiv:2606.27961
Abstract
Given \(H\leq G\) finite abelian groups, a transversal \(T\subseteq G\) for \(G/H\) has fixed size \(|G/H|\), but its ambient difference support \(D(T)=T-T\) can vary with the embedding of \(H\) in \(G\). We call the transversal difference number of the pair \((G,H)\). This invariant is related to finite abelian factorisation, tiling complements, and small-sumset questions, and is motivated by recent work regarding ambient Galois labels in CRT transforms for cyclotomic-subfield homomorphic encryption. We prove various results regarding this invariant, including a general lower bound where \(m(G,H)\) is the largest order of a subgroup of \(G\) disjoint from \(H\). The bound is sharp for cyclic quotients, and Kneser's theorem gives a cross-transversal estimate leading to exact product families with one nonsplit cyclic coordinate and arbitrary split factors. These results isolate the first genuinely new residual obstruction, namely the same-prime square plane \[ G=(\mathbb Z/p^2\mathbb Z)^2,\qquad H=pG. \] For odd \(p\), this case is the technical core of the paper. Here transversals are graphs of functions \(\mathbb F_p^2\to \mathbb F_p^2\), and \(D(T)\) decomposes into carry-corrected finite-field derivative images. We conjecture that \[ δ(G,H)=(2p-1)^2 \] for all odd primes \(p\), prove the unconditional lower bound \(3p^2-p-1\), and give small-prime, probabilistic, and fixed-polynomial evidence for the conjecture.
27 pages, comments welcome