Some Davenport Constants with Weights and Adhikari \(\&\) Rath’s Conjecture

Abstract

Let \(n \in \mathbb{N}\) and let \(A \subseteq \mathbb{Z}_n\) be such that \(A\) does not contain \(0\) and is non-empty. We define \({E}_A(n)\) to be the least \(t \in \mathbb{N}\) such that for all sequences \((x_1, \ldots, x_t) \in \mathbb{Z}^t\), there exist indices \(j_1, \ldots, j_n \in \mathbb{N}\), \(1 \leq j_1 < \cdots < j_n \leq t\), and \((\theta_1, \ldots, \theta_n) \in A^n\) with \(\sum_{i=1}^n \theta_i x_{j_i} \equiv 0 \pmod{n}\). Similarly, for any such set \(A\), we define the \({Davenport Constant}\) of \(\mathbb{Z}_n\) with weight \(A\) denoted by \(D_A(n)\) to be the least natural number \(k\) such that for any sequence \((x_1, \ldots, x_k) \in \mathbb{Z}^k\), there exist a non-empty subsequence \((x_{j}, \ldots, x_{j_i})\) and \((a_1, \ldots, a_l) \in A^t\) such that \(\sum_{i=1}^n a_i x_{j_i} \equiv 0 \pmod{n}\). Das Adhikari and Rath conjectured that for any set \(A \subseteq \mathbb{Z}_n \setminus \{0\}\), the equality \({E}_A(n) = D_A(n) + n – 1\) holds. In this note, we determine some Davenport constants with weights and also prove that the conjecture holds in some special cases.