We establish asymptotic formulae for the number of $k$-free values of square-free polynomials $F(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})\in \mathbb{Z}[x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}]$ of degree $d\geqslant 2$ for any $n\geqslant 1$, including when the variables are prime, as long as $k\geqslant (3d+1)/4$. This generalizes a work of Browning.

We prove a range of new sum-product type growth estimates over a general field $\mathbb{F}$, in particular the special case $\mathbb{F}=\mathbb{F}_{p}$. They are unified by the theme of “breaking the $3/2$ threshold”, epitomizing the previous state of the art. This concerns two questions pivotal for the sum-product theory, which are lower bounds for the number of distinct cross-ratios determined by a finite subset of $\mathbb{F}$, as well as the number of values of the symplectic form determined by a finite subset of $\mathbb{F}^{2}$. We establish the estimate $|R[A]|\gtrsim |A|^{8/5}$ for cardinality of the set $R[A]$ of distinct cross-ratios, defined by triples of elements of a set $A\subset \mathbb{F}$ (sufficiently small if $\mathbb{F}$ has positive characteristic, similarly for the rest of the estimates), pinned at infinity. The cross-ratio bound enables us to break the threshold in the second question: for a non-collinear point set $P\subset \mathbb{F}^{2}$, the number of distinct values of the symplectic form $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}$ on pairs of distinct points $u,u^{\prime }$ of $P$ is $|\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(P)|\gtrsim |P|^{2/3+c}$, with an explicit $c$. Symmetries of the cross-ratio underlie its local growth properties under both addition and multiplication, yielding an onset of growth of products of difference sets, which is another main result herein. Our proofs make use of specially suited applications of new incidence bounds over $\mathbb{F}$, which apply to higher moments of representation functions. The technical thrust of the paper uses additive combinatorics to relate and adapt these higher moment bounds to growth estimates. A particular instance of this is breaking the threshold in the few sums, many products question over any $\mathbb{F}$, by showing that if $A$ is sufficiently small and has additive doubling constant $M$, then $|AA|\gtrsim M^{-2}|A|^{14/9}$. This result has a second moment version, which allows for new upper bounds for the number of collinear point triples in the set $A\times A\subset \mathbb{F}^{2}$, the quantity often arising in applications of geometric incidence estimates.

We study Piatetski-Shapiro sequences $(\lfloor n^{c}\rfloor )_{n}$ modulo $m$, for non-integer $c>1$ and positive $m$, and we are particularly interested in subword occurrences in those sequences. We prove that each block $\in \{0,1\}^{k}$ of length $k<c+1$ occurs as a subword with the frequency $2^{-k}$, while there are always blocks that do not occur. In particular, those sequences are not normal. For $1<c<2$, we estimate the number of subwords from above and below, yielding the fact that our sequences are deterministic and not morphic. Finally, using the Daboussi–Kátai criterion, we prove that the sequence $\lfloor n^{c}\rfloor$ modulo $m$ is asymptotically orthogonal to multiplicative functions bounded by 1 and with mean value 0.

A flag area measure on an $n$-dimensional euclidean vector space is a continuous translation-invariant valuation with values in the space of signed measures on the flag manifold consisting of a unit vector $v$ and a $(p+1)$-dimensional linear subspace containing $v$ with $0\leqslant p\leqslant n-1$. Using local parallel sets, Hinderer constructed examples of $\text{SO}(n)$-covariant flag area measures. There is an explicit formula for his flag area measures evaluated on polytopes, which involves the squared cosine of the angle between two subspaces. We construct a more general sequence of smooth $\text{SO}(n)$-covariant flag area measures via integration over the normal cycle of appropriate differential forms. We provide an explicit description of our measures on polytopes, which involves an arbitrary elementary symmetric polynomial in the squared cosines of the principal angles between two subspaces. Moreover, we show that these flag area measures span the space of all smooth $\text{SO}(n)$-covariant flag area measures, which gives a classification result in the spirit of Hadwiger’s theorem.

We prove that, for any finite set $A\subset \mathbb{Q}$ with $|AA|\leqslant K|A|$ and any positive integer $k$, the $k$-fold product set of the shift $A+1$ satisfies the bound

$$\begin{eqnarray}|\{(a_{1}+1)(a_{2}+1)\cdots (a_{k}+1):a_{i}\in A\}|\geqslant \frac{|A|^{k}}{(8k^{4})^{kK}}.\end{eqnarray}$$

$K$

$c\log |A|$

$c=c(k)$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$

We apply Newton’s method to stochastic functional evolution equations in Hilbert spaces using semigroup methods. The first-order convergence is based on our generalization of the Gronwall-type inequality. We also establish a second-order convergence in a probabilistic sense.

The lonely runner conjecture, now over fifty years old, concerns the following problem. On a unit-length circular track, consider $m$ runners starting at the same time and place, each runner having a different constant speed. The conjecture asserts that each runner is lonely at some point in time, meaning at a distance at least $1/m$ from the others. We formulate a function field analogue, and give a positive answer in some cases in the new setting.

In this paper we discuss some dimension results for triangle sets of compact sets in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. In particular we prove that for any compact set $F$ in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$, the triangle set $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(F)$ satisfies

$$\begin{eqnarray}\dim _{\text{A}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(F)\geqslant {\textstyle \frac{3}{2}}\dim _{\text{A}}F.\end{eqnarray}$$

$\dim _{\text{A}}F>1$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\dim _{\text{A}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(F)\geqslant 1+\dim _{\text{A}}F.\end{eqnarray}$$

$\dim _{\text{A}}F>4/3$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\dim _{\text{A}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(F)\geqslant \min \{{\textstyle \frac{5}{2}}\dim _{\text{A}}F-1,3\}.\end{eqnarray}$$

$F$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\text{}\underline{\dim _{\text{B}}}F\geqslant {\textstyle \frac{3}{2}}\text{}\underline{\dim _{\text{B}}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(F)\quad \text{and}\quad \overline{\dim _{\text{B}}}F\geqslant {\textstyle \frac{3}{2}}\overline{\dim _{\text{B}}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(F).\end{eqnarray}$$

We show that a coupling of non-colliding simple random walkers on the complete graph on n vertices can include at most n - log n walkers. This improves the only previously known upper bound of n - 2 due to Angel, Holroyd, Martin, Wilson and Winkler (Electron. Commun. Probab.18 (2013)). The proof considers couplings of i.i.d. sequences of Bernoulli random variables satisfying a similar avoidance property, for which there is separate interest.

The paper is concerned with the Steklov eigenvalue problem on cuboids of arbitrary dimension. We prove a two-term asymptotic formula for the counting function of Steklov eigenvalues on cuboids in dimension $d\geqslant 3$. Apart from the standard Weyl term, we calculate explicitly the second term in the asymptotics, capturing the contribution of the $(d-2)$-dimensional facets of a cuboid. Our approach is based on lattice counting techniques. While this strategy is similar to the one used for the Dirichlet Laplacian, the Steklov case carries additional complications. In particular, it is not clear how to establish directly the completeness of the system of Steklov eigenfunctions admitting separation of variables. We prove this result using a family of auxiliary Robin boundary value problems. Moreover, the correspondence between the Steklov eigenvalues and lattice points is not exact, and hence more delicate analysis is required to obtain spectral asymptotics. Some other related results are presented, such as an isoperimetric inequality for the first Steklov eigenvalue, a concentration property of high frequency Steklov eigenfunctions and applications to spectral determination of cuboids.

Extending the notion of regularity introduced by Dickson in 1939, a positive definite ternary integral quadratic form is said to be spinor regular if it represents all the positive integers represented by its spinor genus (that is, all positive integers represented by any form in its spinor genus). Jagy conducted an extensive computer search for primitive ternary quadratic forms that are spinor regular, but not regular, resulting in a list of 29 such forms. In this paper, we will prove that there are no additional forms with this property.

In this paper we investigate the moments and the distribution of $L(1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{D})$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{D}$ varies over quadratic characters associated to square-free polynomials $D$ of degree $n$ over $\mathbb{F}_{q}$, as $n\rightarrow \infty$. Our first result gives asymptotic formulas for the complex moments of $L(1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{D})$ in a large uniform range. Previously, only the first moment has been computed due to the work of Andrade and Jung. Using our asymptotic formulas together with the saddle-point method, we show that the distribution function of $L(1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{D})$ is very close to that of a corresponding probabilistic model. In particular, we uncover an interesting feature in the distribution of large (and small) values of $L(1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{D})$, which is not present in the number field setting. We also obtain $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$-results for the extreme values of $L(1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{D})$, which we conjecture to be the best possible. Specializing $n=2g+1$ and making use of one case of Artin’s class number formula, we obtain similar results for the class number $h_{D}$ associated to $\mathbb{F}_{q}(T)[\sqrt{D}]$. Similarly, specializing to $n=2g+2$ we can appeal to the second case of Artin’s class number formula and deduce analogous results for $h_{D}R_{D}$, where $R_{D}$ is the regulator of $\mathbb{F}_{q}(T)[\sqrt{D}]$.

Small ball inequalities have been extensively studied in the setting of Gaussian processes and associated Banach or Hilbert spaces. In this paper, we focus on studying small ball probabilities for sums or differences of independent, identically distributed random elements taking values in very general sets. Depending on the setting – abelian or non-abelian groups, or vector spaces, or Banach spaces – we provide a collection of inequalities relating different small ball probabilities that are sharp in many cases of interest. We prove these distribution-free probabilistic inequalities by showing that underlying them are inequalities of extremal combinatorial nature, related among other things to classical packing problems such as the kissing number problem. Applications are given to moment inequalities.

Mader proved that every strongly k-connected n-vertex digraph contains a strongly k-connected spanning subgraph with at most 2kn - 2k2 edges, where equality holds for the complete bipartite digraph DKk,n-k. For dense strongly k-connected digraphs, this upper bound can be significantly improved. More precisely, we prove that every strongly k-connected n-vertex digraph D contains a strongly k-connected spanning subgraph with at most kn + 800k(k + Δ(D)) edges, where Δ(D) denotes the maximum degree of the complement of the underlying undirected graph of a digraph D. Here, the additional term 800k(k + Δ(D)) is tight up to multiplicative and additive constants. As a corollary, this implies that every strongly k-connected n-vertex semicomplete digraph contains a strongly k-connected spanning subgraph with at most kn + 800k2 edges, which is essentially optimal since 800k2 cannot be reduced to the number less than k(k - 1)/2.

We also prove an analogous result for strongly k-arc-connected directed multigraphs. Both proofs yield polynomial-time algorithms.

We study the heat semigroup maximal operator associated with a well-known orthonormal system in the $d$-dimensional ball. The corresponding heat kernel is shown to satisfy Gaussian bounds. As a consequence, we can prove weighted $L^{p}$ estimates, as well as some weighted inequalities in mixed norm spaces, for this maximal operator.