New bounds for Szemeredi's theorem, II: A new bound for $r_4(N)$

Abstract

Define $r_4(N)$ to be the largest cardinality of a set $A$ in $\{1,\dots,N\}$ which does not contain four elements in arithmetic progression. In 1998 Gowers proved that $r_4(N) \ll N(\log \log N)^{-c}$ for some absolute constant $c> 0$. In this paper (part II of a series) we improve this to $r_4(N) \ll N e^{-c\sqrt{\log \log N}}$. In part III of the series we will use a more elaborate argument to improve this to $r_4(N) \ll N(\log N)^{-c}$.