Swisher [‘On the supercongruence conjectures of van Hamme’, Res. Math. Sci. 2 (2015), Article no. 18] and He [‘Supercongruences on truncated hypergeometric series’, Results Math. 72 (2017), 303–317] independently proved that Van Hamme’s (G.2) supercongruence holds modulo $p^4$ for any prime $p\equiv 1\pmod {4}$. Swisher also obtained an extension of Van Hamme’s (G.2) supercongruence for $p\equiv 3 \pmod 4$ and $p>3$. In this note, we give new one-parameter generalisations of Van Hamme’s (G.2) supercongruence modulo $p^3$ for any odd prime p. Our proof uses the method of ‘creative microscoping’ introduced by Guo and Zudilin [‘A q-microscope for supercongruences’, Adv. Math. 346 (2019), 329–358].

In this paper, we discuss a connection between geometric measure theory and number theory. This method brings a new point of view for some number-theoretic problems concerning digit expansions. Among other results, we show that for each integer k, there is a number $M>0$ such that if $b_{1},\ldots ,b_{k}$ are multiplicatively independent integers greater than M, there are infinitely many integers whose base $b_{1},b_{2},\ldots ,b_{k}$ expansions all do not have any zero digits.

Let p be a prime with $p\equiv 1\pmod {4}$. Gauss first proved that $2$ is a quartic residue modulo p if and only if $p=x^2+64y^2$ for some $x,y\in \Bbb Z$ and various expressions for the quartic residue symbol $(\frac {2}{p})_4$ are known. We give a new characterisation via a permutation, the sign of which is determined by $(\frac {2}{p})_4$. The permutation is induced by the rule $x \mapsto y-x$ on the $(p-1)/4$ solutions $(x,y)$ to $x^2+y^2\equiv 0 \pmod {p}$ satisfying $1\leq x < y \leq (p-1)/2$.

We prove a divisibility result on sums involving the Apéry-like polynomials

$$ \begin{align*} V_n(x)=\sum_{k=0}^n {n\choose k}{n+k\choose k}{x\choose k}{x+k\choose k}, \end{align*} $$

which confirms a conjectural congruence of Z.-H. Sun. Our proof relies on some combinatorial identities and transformation formulae.

Following Bridgeman, we demonstrate several families of infinite dilogarithm identities associated with Fibonacci numbers, Lucas numbers, convergents of continued fractions of even periods, and terms arising from various recurrence relations.

Let $k\geq 2$ be an integer. We prove that the 2-automatic sequence of odious numbers $\mathcal {O}$ is a k-additive uniqueness set for multiplicative functions: if a multiplicative function f satisfies a multivariate Cauchy’s functional equation $f(x_1+x_2+\cdots +x_k)=f(x_1)+f(x_2)+\cdots +f(x_k)$ for arbitrary $x_1,\ldots ,x_k\in \mathcal {O}$, then f is the identity function $f(n)=n$ for all $n\in \mathbb {N}$.

The Thue–Morse sequence is a prototypical automatic sequence found in diverse areas of mathematics, and in computer science. We study occurrences of factors w within this sequence, or more precisely, the sequence of gaps between consecutive occurrences. This gap sequence is morphic; we prove that it is not automatic as soon as the length of w is at least $2$, thereby answering a question by J. Shallit in the affirmative. We give an explicit method to compute the discrepancy of the number of occurrences of the block $\mathtt {01}$ in the Thue–Morse sequence. We prove that the sequence of discrepancies is the sequence of output sums of a certain base-$2$ transducer.

When a page, represented by the interval $[0,1],$ is folded right over left $ n$ times, the right-hand fold contains a sequence of points. We specify these points and the order in which they appear in each fold. We also determine exactly where in the folded structure any point in $[0,1]$ appears and, given any point on the bottom line of the structure, which point lies at each level above it.

We generalize the greedy and lazy $\beta $-transformations for a real base $\beta $ to the setting of alternate bases ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}=(\beta _0,\ldots ,\beta _{p-1})$, which were recently introduced by the first and second authors as a particular case of Cantor bases. As in the real base case, these new transformations, denoted $T_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ and $L_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ respectively, can be iterated in order to generate the digits of the greedy and lazy ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}$-expansions of real numbers. The aim of this paper is to describe the measure-theoretical dynamical behaviors of $T_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ and $L_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$. We first prove the existence of a unique absolutely continuous (with respect to an extended Lebesgue measure, called the p-Lebesgue measure) $T_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$-invariant measure. We then show that this unique measure is in fact equivalent to the p-Lebesgue measure and that the corresponding dynamical system is ergodic and has entropy $({1}/{p})\log (\beta _{p-1}\cdots \beta _0)$. We give an explicit expression of the density function of this invariant measure and compute the frequencies of letters in the greedy ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}$-expansions. The dynamical properties of $L_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ are obtained by showing that the lazy dynamical system is isomorphic to the greedy one. We also provide an isomorphism with a suitable extension of the $\beta $-shift. Finally, we show that the ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}$-expansions can be seen as $(\beta _{p-1}\cdots \beta _0)$-representations over general digit sets and we compare both frameworks.

We obtain an effective analytic formula, with explicit constants, for the number of distinct irreducible factors of a polynomial $f \in \mathbb {Z}[x]$. We use an explicit version of Mertens’ theorem for number fields to estimate a related sum over rational primes. For a given $f \in \mathbb {Z}[x]$, our result yields a finite list of primes that certifies the number of distinct irreducible factors of f.

We investigate, for given positive integers a and b, the least positive integer $c=c(a,b)$ such that the quotient $\varphi (c!\kern-1.2pt)/\varphi (a!\kern-1.2pt)\varphi (b!\kern-1.2pt)$ is an integer. We derive results on the limit of $c(a,b)/(a+b)$ as a and b tend to infinity and show that $c(a,b)>a+b$ for all pairs of positive integers $(a,b)$, with the exception of a set of density zero.

Merca [‘Congruence identities involving sums of odd divisors function’, Proc. Rom. Acad. Ser. A Math. Phys. Tech. Sci. Inf. Sci. 22(2) (2021), 119–125] posed three conjectures on congruences for specific convolutions of a sum of odd divisor functions with a generating function for generalised m-gonal numbers. Extending Merca’s work, we complete the proof of these conjectures.

We establish a family of q-supercongruences modulo the cube of a cyclotomic polynomial for truncated basic hypergeometric series. This confirms a weaker form of a conjecture of the present authors. Our proof employs a very-well-poised Karlsson–Minton type summation due to Gasper, together with the ‘creative microscoping’ method introduced by the first author in recent joint work with Zudilin.

The article focuses on the evaluation of convolution sums $${W_k}(n): = \mathop \sum \nolimits_{_{m < {n \over k}}} \sigma (m)\sigma (n - km)$$ involving the sum of divisor function $$\sigma (n)$$ for k =21, 33, and 35. In this article, our aim is to obtain certain Eisenstein series of level 21 and use them to evaluate the convolution sums for level 21. We also make use of the existing Eisenstein series identities for level 33 and 35 in evaluating the convolution sums for level 33 and 35. Most of the convolution sums were evaluated using the theory of modular forms, whereas we have devised a technique which is free from the theory of modular forms. As an application, we determine a formula for the number of representations of a positive integer n by the octonary quadratic form $$(x_1^2 + {x_1}{x_2} + ax_2^2 + x_3^2 + {x_3}{x_4} + ax_4^2) + b(x_5^2 + {x_5}{x_6} + ax_6^2 + x_7^2 + {x_7}{x_8} + ax_8^2)$$, for (a, b)=(1, 7), (1, 11), (2, 3), and (2, 5).

Let $p=3n+1$ be a prime with $n\in \mathbb {N}=\{0,1,2,\ldots \}$ and let $g\in \mathbb {Z}$ be a primitive root modulo p. Let $0<a_1<\cdots <a_n<p$ be all the cubic residues modulo p in the interval $(0,p)$. Then clearly the sequence $a_1 \bmod p,\, a_2 \bmod p,\ldots , a_n \bmod p$ is a permutation of the sequence $g^3 \bmod p,\,g^6 \bmod p,\ldots , g^{3n} \bmod p$. We determine the sign of this permutation.

Let $k\geqslant 1$ be a natural number and $\omega _k(n)$ denote the number of distinct prime factors of a natural number n with multiplicity k. We estimate the first and second moments of the functions $\omega _k$ with $k\geqslant 1$. Moreover, we prove that the function $\omega _1(n)$ has normal order $\log \log n$ and the function $(\omega _1(n)-\log \log n)/\sqrt {\log \log n}$ has a normal distribution. Finally, we prove that the functions $\omega _k(n)$ with $k\geqslant 2$ do not have normal order $F(n)$ for any nondecreasing nonnegative function F.

We prove that if $A \subseteq [X,\,2X]$ and $B \subseteq [Y,\,2Y]$ are sets of integers such that gcd (a, b) ⩾ D for at least δ|A||B| pairs (a, b) ε A × B then $|A||B|{ \ll _{\rm{\varepsilon }}}{\delta ^{ - 2 - \varepsilon }}XY/{D^2}$. This is a new result even when δ = 1. The proof uses ideas of Koukoulopoulos and Maynard and some additional combinatorial arguments.

We define a family $\mathcal {B}(t)$ of compact subsets of the unit interval which provides a filtration of the set of numbers whose continued fraction expansion has bounded digits. We study how the set $\mathcal {B}(t)$ changes as the parameter t ranges in $[0,1]$, and see that the family undergoes period-doubling bifurcations and displays the same transition pattern from periodic to chaotic behaviour as the family of real quadratic polynomials. The set $\mathcal {E}$ of bifurcation parameters is a fractal set of measure zero and Hausdorff dimension $1$. The Hausdorff dimension of $\mathcal {B}(t)$ varies continuously with the parameter, and we show that the dimension of each individual set equals the dimension of the corresponding section of the bifurcation set $\mathcal {E}$.

Let $g \geq 2$ be an integer. A natural number is said to be a base-g Niven number if it is divisible by the sum of its base-g digits. Assuming Hooley’s Riemann hypothesis, we prove that the set of base-g Niven numbers is an additive basis, that is, there exists a positive integer $C_g$ such that every natural number is the sum of at most $C_g$ base-g Niven numbers.

Let S be the sum-of-digits function in base 2, which returns the number of 1s in the base-2 expansion of a nonnegative integer. For a nonnegative integer t, define the asymptotic density

$${c_t} = \mathop {\lim }\limits_{N \to \infty } {1 \over N}|\{ 0 \le n < N:s(n + t) \ge s(n)\} |.$$