The apparent structure of dense Sidon sets

Abstract

The correspondence between perfect difference sets and transitive projective planes is well-known. We observe that all known dense (i.e., close to square-root size) Sidon subsets of abelian groups come from projective planes through a similar construction. We classify the Sidon sets arising in this manner from desarguesian planes and find essentially no new examples, but there are many further examples arising from nondesarguesian planes. We conjecture that all dense Sidon sets arise in this manner. We also give a brief bestiary of somewhat smaller Sidon sets with a variety of algebraic origins, and for some of them provide an overarching pattern.