Pollard's theorem in general abelian groups

Abstract: We make further progress towards a Kneser-type generalization of Pollard's Theorem to general abelian groups. For two sets $A$ and $B$ in an abelian group $G$, the \emph{$t$-popular sumset} of $A$ and $B$, denoted by $A+t B$, is the set of elements in $G$ each with at least $t$ representations of the form $a+b$, where $a\in A$ and $b\in B$. For $|A|,\, |B|\ge t\geq 2$, we prove that if \begin{align*} \sum{i=1}^t |A+i B|< t|A|+t|B|-\frac{4}{3}t^2+\frac{2}{3}t, \end{align*} then there exist $A'\subseteq A$ and $B'\subseteq B$ with $|A\setminus A'|+|B\setminus B'|\le t-1$, $A'+_t B'=A'+B'=A+_t B$, and $ \sum{i=1}^t |A+_i B|\ge t|A|+t|B|-t|H|,$ where $H$ is the stabilizer of $A'+B'=A+_t B$. Our result improves the main quadratic term in the previous best bound from $-2t^2$ to $-\frac{4}{3}t^2$.