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Rohrbach's Conjecture


Rohrbach's conjecture asserts that, for each positive integer h, every finite group G has a subset A with A^h=G and |A|<=c_h|G|^(1/h), where c_h depends only on h (Rohrbach 1937). Here A^h consists of ordered products of exactly h elements of A, with repetition allowed. The exponent 1/h is optimal because |G|<=|A|^h.

Yang (2026) proved the conjecture for all finite groups, without an Abelian hypothesis. More generally, there is an absolute constant C such that, for every G, h, and nonnegative real alpha_1, ..., alpha_h with sum 1, there are subsets A_i subset= G satisfying G=A_1...A_h, |A_1|<=|G|^(alpha_1), and |A_i|<=C|G|^(alpha_i) for i>=2. Consequently c_h=1+C(h-1) is permitted. The constant is not asserted to be sharp.


See also

Additive Basis, Finite Group

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References

Rohrbach, H. "Anwendung eines Satzes der additiven Zahlentheorie auf eine gruppentheoretische Frage." Math. Z. 42, 538-542, 1937.Yang, Y. "Rohrbach's Conjecture for Finite Groups." 12 Nov 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.16938v1.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Rohrbach's Conjecture." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/RohrbachsConjecture.html

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