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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Claim. Theorem 1.1 of Kelley and Meka, Strong Bounds for 3-Progressions, states that there is an absolute constant β>0\beta>0 such that every A⊆{1,…,N}A\subseteq\{1,\ldots,N\} with no non-trivial three-term arithmetic progression has density at most 2−Ω((log⁡N)β)2^{-\Omega((\log N)^\beta)}, that is,

r3(N)≤N 2−c(log⁡N)βr_3(N)\le N\,2^{-c(\log N)^{\beta}}

for some c>0c>0 and all large NN, where r3(N)r_3(N) is the largest size of such a set. The quantitative form is Theorem 1.2: a set of density at least 2−d2^{-d} has at least 2−O(d12)N22^{-O(d^{12})}N^2 solutions of x+y=2zx+y=2z, so β\beta can be taken as 1/121/12. The result page Theorem 1.1 records both statements. Since the factor 2−c(log⁡N)β2^{-c(\log N)^\beta} tends to zero, the bound gives r3(N)=o(N)r_3(N)=o(N), the instance k=3k=3 of Problem 139, first proved by Roth in 1953, with a rate the problem does not ask for. The same theorem is the accepted full claim of Problem 140, recorded on its claim page there.

Covers. The instance k=3k=3 of the statement, r3(N)=o(N)r_3(N)=o(N), which Szemerédi's accepted full claim already settles; the page records the bound's rate, which no claim of this problem requires. Nothing about any k≥4k\ge4.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the theorem is the paper's own.

Acceptance. Reviewed: Bloom and Sisask, two named experts on the problem, re-derived the full argument in their refereed exposition The Kelley--Meka bounds for sets free of three-term arithmetic progressions, Essential Number Theory 2 (2023), no. 1, 15--44, doi:10.2140/ent.2023.2.15, and then sharpened the exponent to 1/91/9 in arXiv:2309.02353, which has its own claim page. The site's curator labels the problem proved on Szemerédi's theorem and cites this paper in the commentary only as the best known bound for k=3k=3, which credits the bound and not a settlement of this problem; the curator's acceptance of the same theorem as the proof of Problem 140 is recorded on that problem's claim page. Not refereed: the paper appeared in the proceedings of the 2023 IEEE 64th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2023), pp. 933--973, doi:10.1109/FOCS57990.2023.00059, a conference proceedings and not a journal, and no journal version is recorded (Crossref, 2026-09-18), so refereed is not listed. The proof is not checked here.