On restricted sumsets with bounded degree relations

Abstract: Given two subsets $A, B \subseteq \mathbb{F}p$ and a relation $\mathcal{R}$ on $A \times B$, the restricted sumset of $A, B$ with respect to $\mathcal{R}$ is defined as $A +{\mathcal{R}} B = { a+b \colon (a,b) \notin \mathcal{R} }$. When $\mathcal{R}$ is taken as the equality relation, determining the minimum value of $|A +{\mathcal{R}} B|$ is the famous Erd\H{o}s--Heilbronn problem, which was solved separately by Dias da Silva, Hamidoune and Alon, Nathanson and Ruzsa. Lev later conjectured that if $A, B \subseteq \mathbb{F}_p$ with $|A| + |B| \le p$ and $\mathcal{R}$ is a matching between subsets of $A$ and $B$, then $|A +{\mathcal{R}} B| \ge |A| + |B| - 3$. We confirm this conjecture in the case where $|A| + |B| \le (1-\varepsilon)p$ for any $\varepsilon > 0$, provided that $p > p_0$ for some sufficiently large $p_0$ depending only on $\varepsilon$. Our proof builds on a recent work by Bollob\'as, Leader, and Tiba, and a rectifiability argument developed by Green and Ruzsa. Furthermore, our method extends to cases when $\mathcal{R}$ is a degree-bounded relation, either on both sides $A$ and $B$ or solely on the smaller set. In addition, we contruct subsets $A \subseteq \mathbb{F}p$ with $|A| = \frac{6p}{11} - O(1)$ such that $|A +{\mathcal{R}} A| = p-3$ for any prime number $p$, where $\mathcal{R}$ is a matching on $A$. This extends an earlier example by Lev and hightlights a distinction between the combinatorial notion of the restricted sumset and the classcial Erd\H{o}s--Heilbronn problem, where $|A +_{\mathcal{R}} A| \ge p$ holds given $\mathcal{R} = {(a,a) \colon a \in A}$ is the equality relation on $A$ and $|A| \ge \frac{p+3}{2}$.