This thesis is chiefly concerned with a classical conjecture of Littlewood's regarding the L¹-norm of the Fourier transform, and the closely related idem-potent theorem. The vast majority of the results regarding these problems are, in some sense, qualitative or at the very least infinitary and it has become increasingly apparent that a quantitative state of affairs is desirable. Broadly speaking, the first part of the thesis develops three new tools for tackling the problems above: We prove a new structural theorem for the spectrum of functions in A(G); we extend the notion of local Fourier analysis, pioneered by Bourgain, to a much more general structure, and localize Chang's classic structure theorem as well as our own spectral structure theorem; and we refine some aspects of Freiman's celebrated theorem regarding the structure of sets with small doubling. These tools lead to improvements in a number of existing additive results which we indicate, but for us the main purpose is in application to the analytic problems mentioned above. The second part of the thesis discusses a natural version of Littlewood's problem for finite abelian groups. Here the situation varies wildly with the underlying group and we pay special attention first to the finite field case (where we use Chang's Theorem) and then to the case of residues modulo a prime where we require our new local structure theorem for A(G). We complete the consideration of Littlewood's problem for finite abelian groups by using the local version of Chang's Theorem we have developed. Finally we deploy the Freiman tools along with the extended Fourier analytic techniques to yield a fully quantitative version of the idempotent theorem.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2016-03-29T11:06:09Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 821623 bytes, checksum: 520d1fa102a8bdfeb531d12a30d60f61 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-29T11:06:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 821623 bytes, checksum: 520d1fa102a8bdfeb531d12a30d60f61 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-12 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Os teoremas de Bohnenblust Hille, demonstrados em 1931 no prestigioso jornal Annals of Mathematics, foram utilizados como ferramentas muito úteis na solução do famoso Problema da convergência absoluta de Bohr. Após um longo tempo esquecidos, estes teoremas têm sido bastante explorados nos últimos anos. Este último quinquê- nio experimentou o surgimento de várias obras dedicadas a estimar as constantes de Bohnenblust Hille ([13, 18, 20, 26, 27, 39, 42, 44, 46, 53]) e também conexões inesperadas com a Teoria da Informação Quântica apareceram (ver, por exemplo, [38]). Há, de fato, quatro casos para serem investigados: polinomial (casos real e complexo) e multilinear (casos real e complexo). Podemos resumir em uma frase as principais informa ções dos trabalhos recentes: as constantes das desigualdades de Bohnenblust Hille são, em geral, extraordinariamente menores do que as primeiras estimativas tinham previsto. Neste trabalho apresentamos algumas das nossas pequenas contribuições ao estudo das constantes nas desigualdades de Bohnenblust-Hille, os quais encontram-se contidos em ([40, 41, 42, 44]).The Bohnenblust Hille theorems, proved in 1931 in the prestigious journal Annals of Mathematics, were used as very useful tools in the solution of the famous "Bohr's absolute convergence problem". After a long time overlooked, these theorems have been explored in the recent years. Last quinquennium experienced the rising of several works dedicated to estimate the Bohnenblust Hille constants ([13, 18, 20, 26, 27, 39, 42, 44, 46, 53]) and also unexpected connections with Quantum Information Theory appeared (see, e.g., [38]). There are in fact four cases to be investigated: polynomial (real and complex cases) and multilinear (real and complex cases). We can summarize in a sentence the main information from the recent preprints: the Bohnenblust Hille constants are, in general, extraordinarily smaller than the rst estimates predicted. In this work, we present some of our small contributions to the study of the constants of the inequalities Bohnenblust-Hille, these are contained in ([40, 41, 42, 44]). / Os teoremas de Bohnenblust Hille, demonstrados em 1931 no prestigioso jornal Annals of Mathematics, foram utilizados como ferramentas muito úteis na solução do famoso Problema da convergência absoluta de Bohr. Após um longo tempo esquecidos, estes teoremas têm sido bastante explorados nos últimos anos. Este último quinquê- nio experimentou o surgimento de várias obras dedicadas a estimar as constantes de Bohnenblust Hille ([13, 18, 20, 26, 27, 39, 42, 44, 46, 53]) e também conexões inesperadas com a Teoria da Informação Quântica apareceram (ver, por exemplo, [38]). Há, de fato, quatro casos para serem investigados: polinomial (casos real e complexo) e multilinear (casos real e complexo). Podemos resumir em uma frase as principais informa ções dos trabalhos recentes: as constantes das desigualdades de Bohnenblust Hille são, em geral, extraordinariamente menores do que as primeiras estimativas tinham previsto. Neste trabalho apresentamos algumas das nossas pequenas contribuições ao estudo das constantes nas desigualdades de Bohnenblust-Hille, os quais encontram-se contidos em ([40, 41, 42, 44])