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There is an absolute constant $c>0$ such that, for every $\delta >0$ and all sufficiently large $N$, a subset $A\subseteq [N]$ whose density of a finite subset is $\delta$ and which has no nonconstant three-term arithmetic progression has an arithmetic progression $P\subseteq [N]$ satisfying

The Fourier transform of the balanced function $f=1_A-\delta 1_{[N]}$ has a coefficient of magnitude at least $c_0{\delta }^{2}N$. Indeed, the trilinear countsatisfies $\Lambda (1_A,1_A,1_A)=|A|$, whereas $\Lambda (1_{[N]},1_{[N]},1_{[N]})\gg N^2$. Expanding $1_A=\delta 1_{[N]}+f$ and using the Parseval identity and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality to bound every error term forces $\Vert \hat{f}{\Vert }_{\infty }\gg {\delta }^{2}N$ once $N$ is sufficiently large in terms of $\delta$.

Choose $\theta$ at which this large coefficient occurs. The Dirichlet approximation theorem gives $1\le d\le \sqrt{N}$ with $\Vert d\theta {\Vert }_{\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z}}\le N^{-1/2}$. Partition $[N]$ into progressions of common difference $d$ and lengths between $\eta \sqrt{N}$ and $2\eta \sqrt{N}$, where $\eta >0$ is a sufficiently small multiple of ${\delta }^2$. The linear phase $e(\theta x)$ varies by $O(\eta )$ on each cell. The large Fourier coefficient then givesSince ${\sum }_{x\in [N]}f(x)=0$, the total positive discrepancy is half the total absolute discrepancy, so at least one cell has average of $f$ at least $c{\delta }^2$. This is the required density increment.