A Freiman 2-isomorphism is an injective map onto its image preserving pair-sum equality in both directions, with repeated summands allowed. Put , so , , and . We prove the half-size cyclic Freiman model with a sharp difference-set bound. Assume ; for an empty set the conclusion is immediate.
Choose an odd auxiliary prime large enough that reduction modulo is injective on and no nonzero element of reduces to zero. Choose a multiplier uniformly in . The forbidden residues are
They form a symmetric set, exclude zero since , and have cardinality at most . For each nonzero , the product is uniform on the nonzero residues. Moreover, is the same event as , so one need only sum over the opposite pairs. The union bound gives
Fix a multiplier avoiding all forbidden events. The use of opposite pairs is what achieves the threshold without an extra factor of two.
Represent each by an integer . Partition these residues into the two half-intervals
At least half of has representatives in one of them; call this subset . Both intervals have diameter less than , so for the integer
satisfies .
Define . If , then , hence and the image relation holds. Conversely, if the image relation holds, then . If the original difference were nonzero, would be nonzero; since , this would be a forbidden residue in . Thus .
Finally is injective. If , choose any and apply the converse to , obtaining . Therefore
The construction actually works for any integer ; the prime hypothesis in the question is sufficient.