The spanning number and the independence number of a subset of an abelian group

Bela Bajnok

Let $A=\{a_1,a_2,\dots ,a_m\}$ be a subset of a finite abelian group $G$. We call $A$ {\it $t$-independent} in $G$, if whenever $${\lambda }_1{a}_1+{\lambda }_2{a}_2+\cdots +{\lambda }_m{a}_m=0$$ for some integer…