On an inverse ternary Goldbach problem

Abstract

We prove an inverse ternary Goldbach-type result. Let $N$ be sufficiently large and $c>0$ be sufficiently small. If $A_1,A_2,A_3\subset [N]$ are subsets with $|A_1|,|A_2|,|A_3|\geq N^{1/3-c}$, then $A_1+A_2+A_3$ contains a composite number. This improves on the bound $N^{1/3}$ from Gallagher's larger sieve. The main ingredients in our argument include a type of inverse sieve result in the larger sieve regime, and a variant of the analytic large sieve inequality.