Closure bounds for small skew-sumset scalars ($D(r+s)\le K^{5}D(r)D(s),D(rs)\le K^{5}D(r{)}^{2}D(s)$)

Write $D(t)=|A+tA|/|A|$ and suppose some nonzero $b$ has $D(b)\le K$. The mixed-set Plünnecke-Ruzsa inequality gives $|3A-2A|\le K^5|A|$ and $|A+A|\le K^2|A|$. The Ruzsa covering lemma covers $tA$ by at most $D(t)$ translates of $A-A$. Covering two dilates proves the addition bound. First covering $sA$, then both copies of $rA$ in $r(A-A)$, proves the multiplication bound. The Ruzsa triangle inequality also gives $D(-r)\le K^{2}D(r)$. These bounds transfer controlled additive expansion through a bounded-complexity expression in scalars.

For positive $\alpha ,\beta$, suppose $p^{\alpha }\le |A|\le p^{1-\alpha }$ and $|B|\ge p^{\beta }$. Repeatedly replace a scalar set $S$ by $3SS-3SS$. Quadratic growth of a sixfold product difference set reaches size at least $p/2$ in a number of steps depending only on $\beta$. The closure bounds for small skew-sumset scalars transfer a putative bound $|A+bA|\le K|A|$ to all these scalars with exponent depending only on the number of steps. Averaging collisions over the resulting large scalar set then forces $K^L\ge \frac{1}{4}\min (|A|,p/|A|)\ge p^{\alpha }/4$. This supplies a positive exponent depending only on $\alpha ,\beta$. The finitely many smaller primes are covered by the strict inequality $|A+bA|>|A|$ for every nonzero $b$ when $1<|A|<p$.