The dense model theorem

A key component in the work of Green, Tao, and Ziegler on arithmetic and polynomial progressions in the primes is the dense model theorem. Roughly speaking this theorem allows one to model a dense subset of a sparse pseudorandom set by dense subset of the the ambient space. In the work of Green, Tao, and Zeigler this enabled them to model (essentially) the characteristic function of the set of primes with (essentially) the characteristic function of a set of integers with greater density. They then were able to obtain the existence of certain structures in the model set via Szemerédi’s theorem and its generalizations.   

 More recently, simplified proofs of the dense model theorem have been obtained independently by Gowers and Reingold, Trevisan, Tulsiani and Vadhan. In addition, the latter group has found applications of these ideas in theoretical computer science. In this post we give an expository proof of the dense model theorem, substantially following the paper of Reingold, Trevisan, Tulsiani and Vadhan.   

 With the exception of the min-max theorem from game theory (which can be replaced by (or proved by) the Hahn-Banach theorem, as in Gowers’ approach) the presentation is self-contained.   

(We note that the the theorem, as presented below, isn’t explictly stated in the Green-Tao paper. Roughly speaking, these ideas can be used to simplify/replace sections 7 and 8 of that paper.)