A tight bound for Green's arithmetic triangle removal lemma in vector spaces

Abstract

Let $p$ be a fixed prime. A triangle in $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ is an ordered triple $(x,y,z)$ of points satisfying $x+y+z=0$. Let $N=p^n=|\mathbb{F}_p^n|$. Green proved an arithmetic triangle removal lemma which says that for every $ε>0$ and prime $p$, there is a $δ>0$ such that if $X,Y,Z \subset \mathbb{F}_p^n$ and the number of triangles in $X \times Y \times Z$ is at most $δN^2$, then we can delete $εN$ elements from $X$, $Y$, and $Z$ and remove all triangles. Green posed the problem of improving the quantitative bounds on the arithmetic triangle removal lemma, and, in particular, asked whether a polynomial bound holds. Despite considerable attention, prior to this paper, the best known bound, due to the first author, showed that $1/δ$ can be taken to be an exponential tower of twos of height logarithmic in $1/ε$. We solve Green's problem, proving an essentially tight bound for Green's arithmetic triangle removal lemma in $\mathbb{F}_p^n$. We show that a polynomial bound holds, and further determine the best possible exponent. Namely, there is a computable number $C_p$ such that we may take $δ= (ε/3)^{C_p}$, and we must have $δ\leq ε^{C_p-o(1)}$. In particular, $C_2=1+1/(5/3 - \log_2 3) \approx 13.239$, and $C_3=1+1/c_3$ with $c_3=1-\frac{\log b}{\log 3}$, $b=a^{-2/3}+a^{1/3}+a^{4/3}$, and $a=\frac{\sqrt{33}-1}{8}$, which gives $C_3 \approx 13.901$. The proof uses Kleinberg, Sawin, and Speyer's essentially sharp bound on multicolored sum-free sets, which builds on the recent breakthrough on the cap set problem by Croot-Lev-Pach, and the subsequent work by Ellenberg-Gijswijt, Blasiak-Church-Cohn-Grochow-Naslund-Sawin-Umans, and Alon.