Computational Galois theory, in particular the problem of computing the Galois group of a given polynomial, is a very old problem. Currently, the best algorithmic solution is Stauduhar’s method. Computationally, one of the key challenges in the application of Stauduhar’s method is to find, for a given pair of groups $H<G$ , a $G$ -relative $H$ -invariant, that is a multivariate polynomial $F$ that is $H$ -invariant, but not $G$ -invariant. While generic, theoretical methods are known to find such $F$ , in general they yield impractical answers. We give a general method for computing invariants of large degree which improves on previous known methods, as well as various special invariants that are derived from the structure of the groups. We then apply our new invariants to the task of computing the Galois groups of polynomials over the rational numbers, resulting in the first practical degree independent algorithm.

We analyse the mask associated with the $2n$ -point interpolatory Dubuc–Deslauriers subdivision scheme $S_{a^{[n]}}$ . Sharp bounds are presented for the magnitude of the coefficients $a^{[n]}_{2i-1}$ of the mask. For scales $i \in [1,\sqrt{n}]$ it is shown that $|a^{[n]}_{2i-1}|$ is comparable to $i^{-1}$ , and for larger power scales, exponentially decaying bounds are obtained. Using our bounds, we may precisely analyse the summability of the mask as a function of $n$ by identifying which coefficients of the mask contribute to the essential behaviour in $n$ , recovering and refining the recent result of Deng–Hormann–Zhang that the operator norm of $S_{a^{[n]}}$ on $\ell ^\infty $ grows logarithmically in $n$ .

We consider the classical problem of finding the best uniform approximation by polynomials of $1/(x-a)^2,$ where $a>1$ is given, on the interval $[-\! 1,1]$ . First, using symbolic computation tools we derive the explicit expressions of the polynomials of best approximation of low degrees and then give a parametric solution of the problem in terms of elliptic functions. Symbolic computation is invoked then once more to derive a recurrence relation for the coefficients of the polynomials of best uniform approximation based on a Pell-type equation satisfied by the solutions.

We show how one can obtain an asymptotic expression for some special functions with a very explicit error term starting from appropriate upper bounds. We will work out the details for the Bessel function $J_\nu (x)$ and the Airy function ${\rm Ai}(x).$ In particular, we answer a question raised by Olenko and find a sharp bound on the difference between $J_\nu (x)$ and its standard asymptotics. We also give a very simple and surprisingly precise approximation for the zeros ${\rm Ai}(x).$

This paper contains some applications of the description of knot diagrams by genus, and Gabai’s methods of disk decomposition. We show that there exists no genus one knot of canonical genus 2, and that canonical genus 2 fiber surfaces realize almost every Alexander polynomial only finitely many times (partially confirming a conjecture of Neuwirth).

As a contribution to an eventual solution of the problem of the determination of the maximal subgroups of the Monster we prove that the Monster does not contain any subgroup isomorphic to $\mathrm{PSL}_2(27)$ .

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

We describe algorithms that allow the computation of fundamental domains in the Bruhat–Tits tree for the action of discrete groups arising from quaternion algebras. These algorithms are used to compute spaces of rigid modular forms of arbitrary even weight, and we explain how to evaluate such forms to high precision using overconvergent methods. Finally, these algorithms are applied to the calculation of conjectural equations for the canonical embedding of p-adically uniformizable rational Shimura curves. We conclude with an example in the case of a genus 4 Shimura curve.

Let $Q(N;q,a)$ be the number of squares in the arithmetic progression $qn+a$ , for $n=0$ , $1,\ldots,N-1$ , and let $Q(N)$ be the maximum of $Q(N;q,a)$ over all non-trivial arithmetic progressions $qn + a$ . Rudin’s conjecture claims that $Q(N)=O(\sqrt{N})$ , and in its stronger form that $Q(N)=Q(N;24,1)$ if $N\ge 6$ . We prove the conjecture above for $6\le N\le 52$ . We even prove that the arithmetic progression $24n+1$ is the only one, up to equivalence, that contains $Q(N)$ squares for the values of $N$ such that $Q(N)$ increases, for $7\le N\le 52$ ( $N=8,13,16,23,27,36,41$ and $52$ ).

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

We show that if a Barker sequence of length $n>13$ exists, then either n $=$ 3 979 201 339 721749 133 016 171 583 224 100, or $n > 4\cdot 10^{33}$ . This improves the lower bound on the length of a long Barker sequence by a factor of nearly $2000$ . We also obtain eighteen additional integers $n<10^{50}$ that cannot be ruled out as the length of a Barker sequence, and find more than 237 000 additional candidates $n<10^{100}$ . These results are obtained by completing extensive searches for Wieferich prime pairs and using them, together with a number of arithmetic restrictions on $n$ , to construct qualifying integers below a given bound. We also report on some updated computations regarding open cases of the circulant Hadamard matrix problem.

The problem of finding a nontrivial factor of a polynomial $f(x)$ over a finite field ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ has many known efficient, but randomized, algorithms. The deterministic complexity of this problem is a famous open question even assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis (GRH). In this work we improve the state of the art by focusing on prime degree polynomials; let $n$ be the degree. If $(n-1)$ has a‘large’ $r$ -smooth divisor $s$ , then we find a nontrivial factor of $f(x)$ in deterministic $\mbox{poly}(n^r,\log q)$ time, assuming GRH and that $s=\Omega (\sqrt{n/2^r})$ . Thus, for $r=O(1)$ our algorithm is polynomial time. Further, for $r=\Omega (\log \log n)$ there are infinitely many prime degrees $n$ for which our algorithm is applicable and better than the best known, assuming GRH. Our methods build on the algebraic-combinatorial framework of $m$ -schemes initiated by Ivanyos, Karpinski and Saxena (ISSAC 2009). We show that the $m$ -scheme on $n$ points, implicitly appearing in our factoring algorithm, has an exceptional structure, leading us to the improved time complexity. Our structure theorem proves the existence of small intersection numbers in any association scheme that has many relations, and roughly equal valencies and indistinguishing numbers.

Let $G(q)$ be a finite Chevalley group, where $q$ is a power of a good prime $p$ , and let $U(q)$ be a Sylow $p$ -subgroup of $G(q)$ . Then a generalized version of a conjecture of Higman asserts that the number $k(U(q))$ of conjugacy classes in $U(q)$ is given by a polynomial in $q$ with integer coefficients. In [S. M. Goodwin and G. Röhrle, J. Algebra 321 (2009) 3321–3334], the first and the third authors of the present paper developed an algorithm to calculate the values of $k(U(q))$ . By implementing it into a computer program using $\mathsf{GAP}$ , they were able to calculate $k(U(q))$ for $G$ of rank at most five, thereby proving that for these cases $k(U(q))$ is given by a polynomial in $q$ . In this paper we present some refinements and improvements of the algorithm that allow us to calculate the values of $k(U(q))$ for finite Chevalley groups of rank six and seven, except $E_7$ . We observe that $k(U(q))$ is a polynomial, so that the generalized Higman conjecture holds for these groups. Moreover, if we write $k(U(q))$ as a polynomial in $q-1$ , then the coefficients are non-negative.

Under the assumption that $k(U(q))$ is a polynomial in $q-1$ , we also give an explicit formula for the coefficients of $k(U(q))$ of degrees zero, one and two.

The zeros of certain different sequences of orthogonal polynomials interlace in a well-defined way. The study of this phenomenon and the conditions under which it holds lead to a set of points that can be applied as bounds for the extreme zeros of the polynomials. We consider different sequences of the discrete orthogonal Meixner and Kravchuk polynomials and use mixed three-term recurrence relations, satisfied by the polynomials under consideration, to identify bounds for the extreme zeros of Meixner and Kravchuk polynomials.