Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, Vol 16, No 2

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On Additive Combinatorics of Permutations of ℤn

L. Sunil Chandran, Deepak Rajendraprasad, Nitin Singh

Abstract


Let ℤn denote the ring of integers modulo n. A permutation of ℤn is a sequence of n distinct elements of ℤn. Addition and subtraction of two permutations is defined element-wise. In this paper we consider two extremal problems on permutations of ℤn, namely, the maximum size of a collection of permutations such that the sum of any two distinct permutations in the collection is again a permutation, and the maximum size of a collection of permutations such that no sum of two distinct permutations in the collection is a permutation. Let the sizes be denoted by s(n) and t(n) respectively. The case when n is even is trivial in both the cases, with s(n)=1 and t(n)=n!. For n odd, we prove (nφ(n))/2k≤s(n)≤n!· 2-(n-1)/2((n-1)/2)! and 2(n-1)/2·(n-1 / 2)!≤t(n)≤ 2k·(n-1)!/φ(n), where k is the number of distinct prime divisors of n and φ is the Euler's totient function.

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