Sharp Lower Bounds for Sumsets in Hypercubes

Abstract

We prove a sharp lower bound for the cardinality of sumsets of subsets of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ confined to a hypercube, resolving in strong form a conjecture that was made explicit by Becker, Ivanisvili, Krachun and Madrid and had circulated in the folklore of the field for some time. Specifically, for sets $A_j\subseteq \{0,1,2,\dots,m\}^d$ we show that \[|A_1+\dots+A_n|\;\geq\; (|A_1|\cdots|A_n|)^{1/p},\qquad p=\frac{n\log(m+1)}{\log(nm+1)},\] with the exponent best possible. The only previously known sharp cases were $A_j\subseteq \{0,1\}^d$, for all $n\ge1$, and $A_j\subseteq \{0,1,2\}^d$ for $n=2$. We also prove a sharp inequality in the case when $A_j\subseteq\{0,1,\dots,m_j\}^d$ for different $m_j$. We obtain the above inequality as a corollary of a stronger result on sup-convolution of functions on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, whose proof is based on a novel mixed volume representation of a lattice path norm, together with a sharp one-dimensional functional inequality.