We study arithmetic progressions $\{a,a+b,a+2b,\dots,a+(\ell-1) b\}$, with $\ell\ge 3$, in random subsets of the initial segment of natural numbers $[n]:=\{1,2,\dots, n\}$. Given $p\in[0,1]$ we denote by $[n]_p$ the random subset of $[n]$ which includes every number with probability $p$, independently of one another. The focus lies on sparse random subsets, i.e.\ when $p=p(n)=o(1)$ with respect to $n\to\infty$.

Let $X_\ell$ denote the number of distinct arithmetic progressions of length $\ell$ which are contained in $[n]_p$. We determine the limiting distribution for $X_\ell$ not only for fixed $\ell\ge 3$ but also when $\ell=\ell(n)\to\infty$ sufficiently slowly. Moreover, we prove a central limit theorem for the joint distribution of the pair $(X_{\ell},X_{\ell’})$ for a wide range of $p$. Our proofs are based on the method of moments and combinatorial arguments, such as an algorithmic enumeration of collections of arithmetic progressions.

This is joint work with Yacine Barhoumi-Andr\‘eani and Hong Liu (University of Warwick).