A linear Cauchy–Davenport bound over a full constant field #
This file proves the specialization of the Hou–Leung–Xiang linear Kneser theorem needed for
Clifford's theorem. If every element of K algebraic over k is constant, then nonzero finite
dimensional k-subspaces A, B ⊆ K satisfy
finrank A + finrank B ≤ finrank (A * B) + 1.
The proof is the Dyson e-transform induction from Hou–Leung–Xiang. The full-constant-field hypothesis makes the stabilizer-field step direct and avoids a separate finite/infinite base-field split.
If a finite-dimensional subspace A containing 1 has dimension bigger than one, some
nonzero e ∈ B makes the Dyson intersection A ∩ B e⁻¹ proper.
One Dyson e-transform preserves the sum of dimensions, strictly decreases the first subspace, and does not enlarge the product space.
The normalized linear Cauchy–Davenport bound, for subspaces containing 1.
Linear Cauchy–Davenport over a full constant field. Nonzero finite-dimensional
subspaces of K have product dimension at least the sum of their dimensions minus one.