Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/iii/paper-129/4/iv/solution

Let have density at least and put . If has too few four-term progressions, part ii forces to be large. Part iii then produces a frequency graph with large additive energy. The Balog-Szemerédi-Gowers theorem extracts a large piece with small doubling, and a finite-field Freiman theorem makes the frequency selection approximately affine-linear there. Integrating these approximately linear derivative frequencies produces correlation of with a quadratic phase, as in the inverse theorem for the Gowers U3 norm over a finite field.
Restricting to a suitable level set of that quadratic phase produces a density increment on a structured affine subspace. Iterating these increments cannot continue indefinitely because density is at most one. Once is sufficiently large in terms of , the iteration must instead terminate with the expected nontrivial four-term progression. This is the density-increment proof of the finite-field four-term progression theorem.

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