Given a sequence of polynomials $\{x_k(q)\}_{k \ges 0}$, define the transformation

$$y_n(q) = a^n\sum\limits_{i = 0}^n {\left( \matrix{n \cr i} \right)} b^{n-i}x_i(q)$$

$n\ges 0$

$[x_{i+j}(q)]_{i,j \ges 0}$

$\{y_n(q)\}_{n\ges 0}$

We prove a lower bound for the large sieve with square moduli.

We prove some congruences on sums involving fourth powers of central q-binomial coefficients. As a conclusion, we confirm the following supercongruence observed by Long [Pacific J. Math. 249 (2011), 405–418]:

$$\sum\limits_{k = 0}^{((p^r-1)/(2))} {\displaystyle{{4k + 1} \over {{256}^k}}} \left( \matrix{2k \cr k} \right)^4\equiv p^r\quad \left( {\bmod p^{r + 3}} \right),$$

We prove asymptotic formulae for sums of the form

$$\sum\limits_{n\in {\open z}^d\cap K} {\prod\limits_{i = 1}^t {F_i} } (\psi _i(n)),$$

The paper combines ingredients from the work of Green and Tao on linear equations in primes and that of Matthiesen on linear correlations amongst integers represented by a quadratic form. To make the von Mangoldt function compatible with the representation function of a quadratic form, we provide a new pseudorandom majorant for both – an average of the known majorants for each of the functions – and prove that it has the required pseudorandomness properties.

Suppose that N is 2-coloured. Then there are infinitely many monochromatic solutions to $x+y=z^{2}$. On the other hand, there is a 3-colouring of N with only finitely many monochromatic solutions to this equation.

We prove that for every sufficiently large integer $n$, the polynomial $1+x+x^{2}/11+x^{3}/111+\cdots +x^{n}/111\ldots 1$ is irreducible over the rationals, where the coefficient of $x^{k}$ for $1\leqslant k\leqslant n$ is the reciprocal of the decimal number consisting of $k$ digits which are each $1$. Similar results following from the same techniques are discussed.

We consider sequences of the form $(a_{n}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})_{n}$ mod 1, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in [0,1]$ and where $(a_{n})_{n}$ is a strictly increasing sequence of positive integers. If the asymptotic distribution of the pair correlations of this sequence follows the Poissonian model for almost all $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ in the sense of Lebesgue measure, we say that $(a_{n})_{n}$ has the metric pair correlation property. Recent research has revealed a connection between the metric theory of pair correlations of such sequences, and the additive energy of truncations of $(a_{n})_{n}$. Bloom, Chow, Gafni and Walker speculated that there might be a convergence/divergence criterion which fully characterizes the metric pair correlation property in terms of the additive energy, similar to Khintchine’s criterion in the metric theory of Diophantine approximation. In the present paper we give a negative answer to such speculations, by showing that such a criterion does not exist. To this end, we construct a sequence $(a_{n})_{n}$ having large additive energy which, however, maintains the metric pair correlation property.

In this paper, we improve the moment estimates for the gaps between numbers that can be represented as a sum of two squares of integers. We consider a certain sum of Bessel functions and prove the upper bound for its mean value. This bound provides estimates for the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}$th moments of gaps for all $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\leqslant 2$.

We examine correlations of the Möbius function over $\mathbb{F}_{q}[t]$ with linear or quadratic phases, that is, averages of the form 1

$$\begin{eqnarray}\frac{1}{q^{n}}\mathop{\sum }_{\deg f<n}\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(f)\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(Q(f))\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}$

$\mathbb{F}_{q}$

$Q\in \mathbb{F}_{q}[x_{0},\ldots ,x_{n-1}]$

$x_{0},\ldots ,x_{n-1}$

$f=\sum _{i<n}x_{i}t^{i}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$

$O_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}}(q^{(-1/4+\unicode[STIX]{x1D716})n})$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}>0$

$Q$

$O(q^{-n^{c}})$

$c>0$

$Q$

$O(q^{-c^{\prime }n})$

$c^{\prime }>0$

$Q(f)$

$f^{2}$

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.

We record $\binom{42}{2}+\binom{23}{2}+\binom{13}{2}=1192$ functional identities that, apart from being amazingly amusing in themselves, find application in the derivation of Ramanujan-type formulas for $1/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$ and in the computation of mathematical constants.

A subset $A$ of a finite abelian group $G$ is called $(k,l)$-sum-free if the sum of $k$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $A$ never equals the sum of $l$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $A$. We find an explicit formula for the maximum size of a $(k,l)$-sum-free subset in $G$ for all $k$ and $l$ in the case when $G$ is cyclic by proving that it suffices to consider $(k,l)$-sum-free intervals in subgroups of $G$. This simplifies and extends earlier results by Hamidoune and Plagne [‘A new critical pair theorem applied to sum-free sets in abelian groups’, Comment. Math. Helv. 79(1) (2004), 183–207] and Bajnok [‘On the maximum size of a $(k,l)$-sum-free subset of an abelian group’, Int. J. Number Theory 5(6) (2009), 953–971].

We establish finite analogues of the identities known as the Aoki–Ohno relation and the Le–Murakami relation in the theory of multiple zeta values. We use an explicit form of a generating series given by Aoki and Ohno.

Let $\mathbb{N}$ be the set of all nonnegative integers. For any set $A\subset \mathbb{N}$, let $R(A,n)$ denote the number of representations of $n$ as $n=a+a^{\prime }$ with $a,a^{\prime }\in A$. There is no partition $\mathbb{N}=A\cup B$ such that $R(A,n)=R(B,n)$ for all sufficiently large integers $n$. We prove that a partition $\mathbb{N}=A\cup B$ satisfies $|R(A,n)-R(B,n)|\leq 1$ for all nonnegative integers $n$ if and only if, for each nonnegative integer $m$, exactly one of $2m+1$ and $2m$ is in $A$.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. We obtain new Menon’s identities by using the actions of some subgroups of $(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^{\times }$ on the set $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. In particular, let $p$ be an odd prime and let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ be a positive integer. If $H_{k}$ is a subgroup of $(\mathbb{Z}/p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}\mathbb{Z})^{\times }$ with index $k=p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}u$ such that $0\leqslant \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and $u\mid p-1$, then

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{x\in H_{k}}(x-1,p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}})=\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}})}{k}\bigg(1+k(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD})+u\frac{p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}-1}{p-1}\bigg),\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(n)$

For a given set $S\subset \mathbb{N}$, $R_{S}(n)$ is the number of solutions of the equation $n=s+s^{\prime },s<s^{\prime },s,s^{\prime }\in S$. Suppose that $m$ and $r$ are integers with $m>r\geq 0$ and that $A$ and $B$ are sets with $A\cup B=\mathbb{N}$ and $A\cap B=\{r+mk:k\in \mathbb{N}\}$. We prove that if $R_{A}(n)=R_{B}(n)$ for all positive integers $n$, then there exists an integer $l\geq 1$ such that $r=2^{2l}-1$ and $m=2^{2l+1}-1$. This solves a problem of Chen and Lev [‘Integer sets with identical representation functions’, Integers16 (2016), A36] under the condition $m>r$.

Let $\mathfrak{D}$ be a residually finite Dedekind domain and let $\mathfrak{n}$ be a nonzero ideal of $\mathfrak{D}$. We consider counting problems for the ideal chains in $\mathfrak{D}/\mathfrak{n}$. By using the Cauchy–Frobenius–Burnside lemma, we also obtain some further extensions of Menon’s identity.

We prove two conjectural congruences on the $(p-1)$th Apéry number, which were recently proposed by Z.-H. Sun.

Green and Tao famously proved in 2005 that any subset of the primes of fixed positive density contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. Green had previously shown that, in fact, any subset of the primes of relative density tending to zero sufficiently slowly contains a three-term progression. This was followed by work of Helfgott and de Roton, and Naslund, who improved the bounds on the relative density in the case of three-term progressions. The aim of this note is to present an analogous result for longer progressions by combining a quantified version of the relative Szemerédi theorem given by Conlon, Fox and Zhao with Henriot's estimates of the enveloping sieve weights.