May the triforce be the 3-uniform hypergraph on six vertices with edges {123′, 12′3, 1′23}. We show that the minimum triforce density in a 3-uniform hypergraph of edge density δ is δ4–o(1) but not O(δ4).

Let M(δ) be the maximum number such that the following holds: for every ∊ > 0 and $G = {\mathbb{F}}_2^n$ with n sufficiently large, if A ⊆ G × G with A ≥ δ|G|2, then there exists a nonzero “popular difference” d ∈ G such that the number of “corners” (x, y), (x + d, y), (x, y + d) ∈ A is at least (M(δ)–∊)|G|2. As a corollary via a recent result of Mandache, we conclude that M(δ) = δ4–o(1) and M(δ) = ω(δ4).

On the other hand, for 0 < δ < 1/2 and sufficiently large N, there exists A ⊆ [N]3 with |A| ≥ δN3 such that for every d ≠ 0, the number of corners (x, y, z), (x + d, y, z), (x, y + d, z), (x, y, z + d) ∈ A is at most δc log(1/δ)N3. A similar bound holds in higher dimensions, or for any configuration with at least 5 points or affine dimension at least 3.

Let $n$ be a positive integer and $a$ an integer prime to $n$. Multiplication by $a$ induces a permutation over $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}=\{\overline{0},\overline{1},\ldots ,\overline{n-1}\}$. Lerch’s theorem gives the sign of this permutation. We explore some applications of Lerch’s result to permutation problems involving quadratic residues modulo $p$ and confirm some conjectures posed by Sun [‘Quadratic residues and related permutations and identities’, Preprint, 2018, arXiv:1809.07766]. We also study permutations involving arbitrary $k$th power residues modulo $p$ and primitive roots modulo a power of $p$.

A Ducci sequence is a sequence of integer $n$-tuples generated by iterating the map

$$\begin{eqnarray}D:(a_{1},a_{2},\ldots ,a_{n})\mapsto (|a_{1}-a_{2}|,|a_{2}-a_{3}|,\ldots ,|a_{n}-a_{1}|).\end{eqnarray}$$

$P(n)$

$n$

$n$

$p\equiv 5\hspace{0.6em}({\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}8)$

$2$

$x^{2}-py^{2}=-4$

$x$

$y$

We conjecture that bounded generalised polynomial functions cannot be generated by finite automata, except for the trivial case when they are ultimately periodic.

Using methods from ergodic theory, we are able to partially resolve this conjecture, proving that any hypothetical counterexample is periodic away from a very sparse and structured set. In particular, we show that for a polynomial $p(n)$ with at least one irrational coefficient (except for the constant one) and integer $m\geqslant 2$, the sequence $\lfloor p(n)\rfloor \hspace{0.2em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}m$ is never automatic.

We also prove that the conjecture is equivalent to the claim that the set of powers of an integer $k\geqslant 2$ is not given by a generalised polynomial.

We prove that, given a positive integer $m$, there is a sequence $\{n_{i}\}_{i=1}^{k}$ of positive integers such that

$$\begin{eqnarray}m=\frac{1}{n_{1}}+\frac{1}{n_{2}}+\cdots +\frac{1}{n_{k}}\end{eqnarray}$$

$\{1/n_{i}\}_{i=1}^{k}$

Given a prime $p\geqslant 5$ and an integer $s\geqslant 1$, we show that there exists an integer $M$ such that for any quadratic polynomial $f$ with coefficients in the ring of integers modulo $p^{s}$, such that $f$ is not a square, if a sequence $(f(1),\ldots ,f(N))$ is a sequence of squares, then $N$ is at most $M$. We also provide some explicit formulas for the optimal $M$.

A celebrated result by Bourgain and Wierdl states that ergodic averages along primes converge almost everywhere for $L^{p}$ -functions, $p>1$ , with a polynomial version by Wierdl and Nair. Using an anti-correlation result for the von Mangoldt function due to Green and Tao, we observe everywhere convergence of such averages for nilsystems and continuous functions.

We study the average error term in the usual approximation to the number of y-friable integers congruent to a modulo q, where a ≠ 0 is a fixed integer. We show that in the range exp{(log log x)5/3+ɛ} ⩽ y ⩽ x and on average over q ⩽ x/M with M → ∞ of moderate size, this average error term is asymptotic to −|a| Ψ(x/|a|, y)/2x. Previous results of this sort were obtained by the second author for reasonably dense sequences, however the sequence of y-friable integers studied in the current paper is thin, and required the use of different techniques, which are specific to friable integers.

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.