The Davenport constant of a finite Abelian group is defined to be the length of the longest minimal zero-system
of
and is denoted
.
Symbolically,
for completeness.
In other words, if
is a finite Abelian group of order
, then the Davenport constant of
is the minimal
such that every sequence of elements of
with length
contains a nonempty subsequence with a zero-sum.
Some values of the Davenport constant include the following.
1. .
2. Let
be a finite
-group.
Then
.
3. Let
with
.
Then
One open question in finite group theory is the determination of a general formula for .
If ,
where
,
then
is a classical lower bound for
. Wang (2026) constructed the rank-
groups
where
and
,
for which
and
.
Thus
is unbounded even when the rank
is fixed. In particular, this disproves the proposed
upper bound
.