Weakly mixing sets and polynomial equations

Abstract

We investigate polynomial patterns which can be guaranteed to appear in \emph{weakly mixing} sets introduced by introduced by Furstenberg and studied by Fish. In particular, we prove that if $A \subset \mathbb N$ is a weakly mixing set and $p(x) \in \mathbb Z[x]$ a polynomial of odd degree with positive leading coefficient, then all sufficiently large integers $N$ can be represented as $N = n_1 + n_2$, where $p(n_1) + m,\ p(n_2) + m \in A$ for some $m \in A$.