Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}>1$ be a real number and define the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ -transformation on $[0,1]$ by $T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}:x\mapsto \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}x\,\text{mod}\,1$ . Further, define

$$\begin{eqnarray}W_{y}(T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}):=\{x\in [0,1]:|T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}^{n}x-y|<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}(n)\text{ for infinitely many }n\}\end{eqnarray}$$

$$\begin{eqnarray}W(T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}):=\{(x,y)\in [0,1]^{2}:|T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}^{n}x-y|<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}(n)\text{ for infinitely many }n\},\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}_{{>}0}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}(n)\rightarrow 0$

$n\rightarrow \infty$

For any number field we calculate the exact proportion of rational numbers which are everywhere locally a norm but not globally a norm from the number field.

Let $q\in (1,2)$ . A $q$ -expansion of a number $x$ in $[0,1/(q-1)]$ is a sequence $({\it\delta}_{i})_{i=1}^{\infty }\in \{0,1\}^{\mathbb{N}}$ satisfying

$$\begin{eqnarray}x=\mathop{\sum }_{i=1}^{\infty }\frac{{\it\delta}_{i}}{q^{i}}.\end{eqnarray}$$

${\mathcal{B}}_{\aleph _{0}}$

$q$

$x$

$q$

${\mathcal{B}}_{1,\aleph _{0}}$

$q$

$1$

$q$

$1=\sum _{i=1}^{\infty }q^{-n_{i}}$

$\min {\mathcal{B}}_{\aleph _{0}}=\min {\mathcal{B}}_{1,\aleph _{0}}=(1+\sqrt{5})/2$

${\mathcal{B}}_{\aleph _{0}}\cap ((1+\sqrt{5})/2,q_{1}]=\{q_{1}\}$

$q_{1}\,({\approx}1.64541)$

$x^{6}-x^{4}-x^{3}-2x^{2}-x-1=0$

${\mathcal{B}}_{1,\aleph _{0}}$

$q_{3}\,({\approx}1.68042)$

$x^{5}-x^{4}-x^{3}-x+1=0$

${\mathcal{B}}_{\aleph _{0}}\cap (q_{1},q_{3}]=\{q_{2},q_{3}\}$

$q_{2}\,({\approx}1.65462)$

$x^{6}-2x^{4}-x^{3}-1=0$

The illumination problem may be phrased as the problem of covering a convex body in Euclidean $n$ -space by a minimum number of translates of its interior. By a probabilistic argument, we show that, arbitrarily close to the Euclidean ball, there is a centrally symmetric convex body of illumination number exponentially large in the dimension.

We investigate the problem of the decomposition of balls into a finite number of congruent pieces in dimension $d=2k$ . In addition, we prove that the $d$ -dimensional unit ball $B_{d}$ can be divided into a finite number of congruent pieces if $d=4$ or $d\geqslant 6$ . We show that the minimal number of required pieces is less than $20d$ , if $d\geqslant 10$ .

We show that if a collection of lines in a vector space over a finite field has “dimension” at least $2(d-1)+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ , then its union has “dimension” at least $d+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ . This is the sharp estimate of its type when no structural assumptions are placed on the collection of lines. We also consider some refinements and extensions of the main result, including estimates for unions of $k$ -planes.

We prove a family of sharp bilinear space–time estimates for the half-wave propagator $\text{e}^{\text{i}t\sqrt{-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}}}$ . As a consequence, for radially symmetric initial data, we establish sharp estimates of this kind for a range of exponents beyond the classical range.

We establish lower bounds for (i) the numbers of positive and negative terms and (ii) the number of sign changes in the sequence of Fourier coefficients at squarefree integers of a half-integral weight modular Hecke eigenform.

A k-uniform hypergraph H = (V, E) is called ℓ-orientable if there is an assignment of each edge e ∈ E to one of its vertices v ∈ e such that no vertex is assigned more than ℓ edges. Let Hn,m,k be a hypergraph, drawn uniformly at random from the set of all k-uniform hypergraphs with n vertices and m edges. In this paper we establish the threshold for the ℓ-orientability of Hn,m,k for all k ⩾ 3 and ℓ ⩾ 2, that is, we determine a critical quantity c*k,ℓ such that with probability 1 − o(1) the graph Hn,cn,k has an ℓ-orientation if c < c*k,ℓ , but fails to do so if c > c*k,ℓ .

Our result has various applications, including sharp load thresholds for cuckoo hashing, load balancing with guaranteed maximum load, and massive parallel access to hard disk arrays.

For positive integers n and q and a monotone graph property $\mathcal{A}$ , we consider the two-player, perfect information game WC(n, q, $\mathcal{A}$ ), which is defined as follows. The game proceeds in rounds. In each round, the first player, called Waiter, offers the second player, called Client, q + 1 edges of the complete graph Kn which have not been offered previously. Client then chooses one of these edges which he keeps and the remaining q edges go back to Waiter. If, at the end of the game, the graph which consists of the edges chosen by Client satisfies the property $\mathcal{A}$ , then Waiter is declared the winner; otherwise Client wins the game. In this paper we study such games (also known as Picker–Chooser games) for a variety of natural graph-theoretic parameters, such as the size of a largest component or the length of a longest cycle. In particular, we describe a phase transition type phenomenon which occurs when the parameter q is close to n and is reminiscent of phase transition phenomena in random graphs. Namely, we prove that if q ⩾ (1 + ϵ)n, then Client can avoid components of order cϵ−2 ln n for some absolute constant c > 0, whereas for q ⩽ (1 − ϵ)n, Waiter can force a giant, linearly sized component in Client's graph. In the second part of the paper, we prove that Waiter can force Client's graph to be pancyclic for every q ⩽ cn, where c > 0 is an appropriate constant. Note that this behaviour is in stark contrast to the threshold for pancyclicity and Hamiltonicity of random graphs.

How many strict local maxima can a real quadratic function on {0, 1}n have? Holzman conjectured a maximum of $\binom{n }{ \lfloor n/2 \rfloor}$ . The aim of this paper is to prove this conjecture. Our approach is via a generalization of Sperner's theorem that may be of independent interest.

Answering a question raised by Dudek and Prałat, we show that if pn → ∞, w.h.p., whenever G = G(n, p) is 2-edge-coloured there is a monochromatic path of length (2/3 + o(1))n. This result is optimal in the sense that 2/3 cannot be replaced by a larger constant.

As part of the proof we obtain the following result. Given a graph G on n vertices with at least $(1-\varepsilon)\binom{n}{2}$ edges, whenever G is 2-edge-coloured, there is a monochromatic path of length at least $(2/3 - 110\sqrt{\varepsilon})n$ . This is an extension of the classical result by Gerencsér and Gyárfás which says that whenever Kn is 2-coloured there is a monochromatic path of length at least 2n/3.