Sums, Products and Projections of Discretized Sets

In the discretized setting, the size of a set is measured by its covering number by δ-balls (a.k.a. metric entropy), where δ is the scale. In this document, we investigate combinatorial properties of discretized sets under addition, multiplication and orthogonal projection. There are three parts. First, we prove sum-product estimates in matrix algebras, generalizing Bourgain's sum-product theorem in the ring of real numbers and improving higher dimensional sum-product estimates previously obtained by Bourgain-Gamburd. Then, we study orthogonal projections of subsets in the Euclidean space, generalizing Bourgain's discretized projection theorem to higher rank situations. Finally, in a joint work with Nicolas de Saxce, we prove a product theorem for perfect Lie groups, generalizing previous results of Bourgain-Gamburd and Saxce.