Arithmetic patches, weak tangents, and dimension

We investigate the relationships between several classical notions in arithmetic combinatorics and geometry including the presence (or lack of) arithmetic progressions (or patches in dimensions at least 2), the structure of tangent sets, and the Assouad dimension. We begin by extending a recent result of Dyatlov and Zahl by showing that a set cannot contain arbitrarily large arithmetic progressions (patches) if it has Assouad dimension strictly smaller than the ambient spatial dimension. Seeking a partial converse, we go on to prove that having Assouad dimension equal to the ambient spatial dimension is equivalent to having weak tangents with non-empty interior and to ‘asymptotically’ containing arbitrarily large arithmetic patches. We present some applications of our results concerning sets of integers, which include a weak solution to the Erdös–Turán conjecture on arithmetic progressions.