Linear equations and chromatic thresholds in $B_h$ sets

Abstract

We derive sparse analogs of several Roth-type results, showing that they hold in $B_h$ sets of near-maximum size. It is shown that if a $B_h$ set is free of pairwise distinct solutions to a linear equation with more than $2h$ variables then it must be a constant factor smaller than the best-known upper bound on the size of any $B_h$ set. As a key input, it is established that extremal $B_h$ sets are Fourier pseudorandom. If the forbidden equation has a certain subdivision structure, an asymptotic saving is obtained. The case of Sidon sets ($h=2$) was previously studied by Conlon, Fox, Sudakov, and Zhao as well as Prendiville. When forbidding a non-translation-invariant equation $E$ from a Sidon set, it is shown that if $E$ has a zero-sum subcollection of at least five coefficients then the Sidon set must either be very small or generate a Cayley graph with bounded chromatic number. On the other hand, large Sidon sets are constructed that generate Cayley graphs with unbounded chromatic number and are also free of multiple equations with zero-sum subcollections of four coefficients. This can be viewed as a sparse analog of a result of Liu, Wu, Yang, and Zhang characterizing linear equations with vanishing chromatic threshold.