Breaking the 6/5 threshold for sums and products modulo a prime

Abstract

Let $A \subset \mathbb{F}_p$ of size at most $p^{3/5}$. We show $$|A+A| + |AA| \gtrsim |A|^{6/5 + c},$$ for $c = 4/305$. Our main tools are the cartesian product point--line incidence theorem of Stevens and de Zeeuw and the theory of higher energies developed by the second author.