/- Copyright 2026 The Formal Conjectures Authors. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. -/ import FormalConjecturesUtil

Erdős Problem 540

References:

    erdosproblems.com/540

    [Er65b] Erdős, Paul, Some recent advances and current problems in number theory. Lectures on Modern Mathematics, Vol. III (1965), 196-244.

    [Er73] Erdős, P., Problems and results on combinatorial number theory. A survey of combinatorial theory (Proc. Internat. Sympos., Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, Colo., 1971) (1973), 117-138.

    [ErGr80] Erdős, P. and Graham, R., Old and new problems and results in combinatorial number theory. Monographies de L'Enseignement Mathematique (1980).

    [Ol68] Olson, John E., An addition theorem modulo {$p$}. J. Combinatorial Theory (1968), 45--52.

    [Ba12] Balandraud, Éric, An addition theorem and maximal zero-sum free sets in $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$. Israel J. Math. (2012), 405-429.

    [HaZe96] Hamidoune, Yahya Ould and Zémor, Gilles, On zero-free subset sums. Acta Arith. (1996), 143--152.

    [Gu04] Guy, Richard K., Unsolved problems in number theory. (2004), xviii+437.

    [ErHe64] Erdős, P. and Heilbronn, H., On the addition of residue classes mod $p$. Acta Arith. (1964), 149--159.

    [Sz70] Szemerédi, E., On a conjecture of Erdős and Heilbronn. Acta Arith. (1970), 227-229.

namespace Erdos540

A finite set has a non-empty subset whose sum is zero.

def HasZeroSubsetSum {G : Type*} [AddCommMonoid G] (A : Finset G) : Prop := S : Finset G, S A S.Nonempty S.sum id = 0

Is it true that if $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ has size $\gg N^{1/2}$ then there exists some non-empty $S\subseteq A$ such that $\sum_{n\in S}n\equiv 0\pmod{N}$?

Szemerédi proved the answer is yes, in fact for arbitrary finite abelian groups.

@[category research solved, AMS 5 11, formal_proof using lean4 at "https://github.com/plby/lean-proofs/blob/main/src/v4.29.1/ErdosProblems/Erdos540.lean"] theorem declaration uses 'sorry'erdos_540 : answer(True) C : , 0 < C (N : ), 0 < N A : Finset (ZMod N), C * Real.sqrt N A.card HasZeroSubsetSum A := True C, 0 < C (N : ), 0 < N (A : Finset (ZMod N)), C * N A.card HasZeroSubsetSum A All goals completed! 🐙 end Erdos540