In Ramsey theory, a set S of natural numbers is considered to be a large set if and only if Van der Waerden's theorem can be generalized to assert the existence of arithmetic progressions with common difference in S. That is, S is large if and only if every finite partition of the natural numbers has a cell containing arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions having common differences in S. Necessary conditions for largeness include: Two sufficient conditions are: The first sufficient condition implies that if S is a thick set, then S is large.
Other facts about large sets include: If
A set is k-large, for a natural number k > 0, when it meets the conditions for largeness when the restatement of van der Waerden's theorem is concerned only with k-colorings.
Every set is either large or k-large for some maximal k. This follows from two important, albeit trivially true, facts: It is unknown whether there are 2-large sets that are not also large sets.
Brown, Graham, and Landman (1999) conjecture that no such sets exists.