It was asked by E. Szemerédi if, for a finite set $A\subset {\mathbb {Z}}$, one can improve estimates for $\max \{|A+A|,|A\cdot A|\}$, under the constraint that all integers involved have a bounded number of prime factors, that is, each $a\in A$ satisfies $\omega (a)\leq k$. In this paper we show that this maximum is at least of order $|A|^{\frac {5}{3}-o_\epsilon (1)}$ provided $k\leq (\log |A|)^{1-\varepsilon }$ for any $\varepsilon \gt 0$. In fact, this will follow from an estimate for additive energy which is best possible up to factors of size $|A|^{o(1)}$.

We provide two constructions of hyperbolic metrics on 3-manifolds with Heegaard splittings that satisfy certain topological conditions, which both apply to random Heegaard splitting with asymptotic probability 1. These constructions provide a lot of control on the resulting metric, allowing us to prove various results about the coarse growth rate of geometric invariants, such as diameter and injectivity radius, and about arithmeticity and commensurability in families of random 3-manifolds. For example, we show that the diameter of a random Heegaard splitting grows coarsely linearly in the length of the associated random walk. The constructions only use tools from the deformation theory of Kleinian groups, that is, we do not rely on the solution of the geometrization conjecture by Perelman. In particular, we give a proof of Maher’s result that random 3-manifolds are hyperbolic that bypasses geometrization.