arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Pablo Candela.
These notes constitute the first part of a detailed exposition of the theory of nilspaces developed by Camarena and Szegedy. We treat what can be called the algebraic part of the theory, in which nilspaces are studied without any topological assumption.
These notes form the second part of a detailed account of the theory of nilspaces developed by Camarena and Szegedy. Here we focus on nilspaces equipped with a compact topology that is compatible with the cube structure, called compact nilspaces. The material in these notes relies on the first part of our exposition (available as arXiv:1601.03693), and it expands on the third chapter of the paper of Camarena and Szegedy, providing more detailed proofs of their results. To that end we also include several additional results that are implicit in their paper.
It is known that if $p$ is a sufficiently large prime then for every function $f:\mathbb{Z}_p\to [0,1]$ there exists a continuous function on the circle $f':\mathbb{T}\to [0,1]$ such that the averages of $f$ and $f'$ across any prescribed system of linear forms of complexity 1 differ by at most $ε$. This result follows from work of Sisask, building on Fourier-analytic arguments of Croot that answered a question of Green. We generalize this result to systems of complexity at most 2, replacing $\mathbb{T}$ with the torus $\mathbb{T}^2$ equipped with a specific filtration. To this end we use a notion of modelling for filtered nilmanifolds, that we define in terms of equidistributed maps, and we combine this with tools of quadratic Fourier analysis. Our results yield expressions on the torus for limits of combinatorial quantities involving systems of complexity 2 on $\mathbb{Z}_p$. For instance, let $m_4(α,\mathbb{Z}_p)$ denote the minimum, over all sets $A\subset \mathbb{Z}_p$ of cardinality at least $αp$, of the density of 4-term arithmetic progressions inside $A$. We show that $\lim_{p\to \infty} m_4(α,\mathbb{Z}_p)$ is equal to the infimum, over all measurable functions $f:\mathbb{T}^2\to [0,1]$ with $\int_{\mathbb{T}^2}f\geq α$, of the following integral: $$ \int_{\mathbb{T}^5} f\binom{x_1}{y_1}\; f\binom{x_1+x_2}{y_1+y_2}\; f\binom{x_1+2x_2}{y_1+2y_2+y_3}\; f\binom{x_1+3 x_2}{y_1+3y_2+3y_3} \,dμ_{\mathbb{T}^5}(x_1,x_2,y_1,y_2,y_3). $$
We give an elementary proof of a generalization of Rokhlin's lemma for commuting non-invertible measure-preserving transformations, and we present several combinatorial applications.
We prove an arithmetic removal result for all compact abelian groups, generalizing a finitary removal result of Král', Serra and the third author. To this end, we consider infinite measurable hypergraphs that are invariant under certain group actions, and for these hypergraphs we prove a symmetry-preserving removal lemma, which extends a finitary result of the same name by the second author. We deduce our arithmetic removal result by applying this lemma to a specific type of invariant measurable hypergraph. As a direct application, we obtain the following generalization of Szemerédi's theorem: for any compact abelian group $G$, any measurable set $A\subset G$ with Haar probability $μ(A)\geqα>0$ satisfies $$\int_G\int_G\; 1_A\big(x\big)\; 1_A\big(x+r\big) \cdots 1_A\big(x+(k-1)r\big) \; dμ(x) dμ(r) \geq c,$$ where the constant $c=c(α,k)>0$ is valid uniformly for all $G$. This result is shown to hold more generally for any translation-invariant system of $r$ linear equations given by an integer matrix with coprime $r\times r$ minors.
Given a positive integer $N$ and real number $α\in [0, 1]$, let $m(α,N)$ denote the minimum, over all sets $A\subset \mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ of size at least $αN$, of the normalized count of 3-term arithmetic progressions contained in $A$. A theorem of Croot states that $m(α,N)$ converges as $N\to\infty$ through the primes, answering a question of Green. Using recent advances in higher-order Fourier analysis, we prove an extension of this theorem, showing that the result holds for $k$-term progressions for general $k$ and further for all systems of integer linear forms of finite complexity. We also obtain a similar convergence result for the maximum densities of sets free of solutions to systems of linear equations. These results rely on a regularity method for functions on finite cyclic groups that we frame in terms of periodic nilsequences, using in particular some regularity results of Szegedy (relying on his joint work with Camarena) and equidistribution results of Green and Tao.
Given a finite family F of linear forms with integer coefficients, and a compact abelian group G, an F-free set in G is a measurable set which does not contain solutions to any equation L(x)=0 for L in F. We denote by d_F(G) the supremum of m(A) over F-free sets A in G, where m is the normalized Haar measure on G. Our main result is that, for any such collection F of forms in at least three variables, the sequence d_F(Z_p) converges to d_F(R/Z) as p tends to infinity over primes. This answers an analogue for Z_p of a question that Ruzsa raised about sets of integers.
We obtain a removal lemma for systems of linear equations over the circle group, using a similar result for finite fields due to Král, Serra and Vena, and we discuss some applications.