In this paper, we study ergodic $\mathbb {Z}^r$-actions and investigate expansion properties along cyclic subgroups. We show that under some spectral conditions, there are always directions which expand significantly a given measurable set with positive measure. Among other things, we use this result to prove that the set of volumes of all r-simplices with vertices in a set with positive upper density must contain an infinite arithmetic progression, thus showing a discrete density analogue of a classical result by Graham.

Let $P_1, \ldots , P_m \in \mathbb {K}[\mathrm {y}]$ be polynomials with distinct degrees, no constant terms and coefficients in a general local field $\mathbb {K}$. We give a quantitative count of the number of polynomial progressions $x, x+P_1(y), \ldots , x + P_m(y)$ lying in a set $S\subseteq \mathbb {K}$ of positive density. The proof relies on a general $L^{\infty }$ inverse theorem which is of independent interest. This inverse theorem implies a Sobolev improving estimate for multilinear polynomial averaging operators which in turn implies our quantitative estimate for polynomial progressions. This general Sobolev inequality has the potential to be applied in a number of problems in real, complex and p-adic analysis.

Given a positive integer m, let $\mathbb {Z}_m$ be the set of residue classes mod m. For $A\subseteq \mathbb {Z}_m$ and $n\in \mathbb {Z}_m$, let $\sigma _A(n)$ be the number of solutions to the equation $n=x+y$ with $x,y\in A$. Let $\mathcal {H}_m$ be the set of subsets $A\subseteq \mathbb {Z}_m$ such that $\sigma _A(n)\geq 1$ for all $n\in \mathbb {Z}_m$. Let

$$ \begin{align*} \ell_m=\min\limits_{A\in \mathcal{H}_m}\bigg\lbrace m^{-1}\sum_{n\in \mathbb{Z}_m}\sigma_A(n)\bigg\rbrace. \end{align*} $$

Ding and Zhao [‘A new upper bound on Ruzsa’s numbers on the Erdős–Turán conjecture’, Int. J. Number Theory 20 (2024), 1515–1523] showed that $\limsup _{m\rightarrow \infty }\ell _m\le 192$. We prove

$$ \begin{align*} \limsup\limits_{m\rightarrow\infty}\ell_m\leq 144 \end{align*} $$

and investigate parallel results on subtractive bases of $ \mathbb {Z}_m$.

We study density and partition properties of polynomial equations in prime variables. We consider equations of the form $a_1h(x_1) + \cdots + a_sh(x_s)=b$, where the ai and b are fixed coefficients and h is an arbitrary integer polynomial of degree d. We establish that the natural necessary conditions for this equation to have a monochromatic non-constant solution with respect to any finite colouring of the prime numbers are also sufficient when the equation has at least $(1+o(1))d^2$ variables. We similarly characterize when such equations admit solutions over any set of primes with positive relative upper density. In both cases, we obtain lower bounds for the number of monochromatic or dense solutions in primes that are of the correct order of magnitude. Our main new ingredient is a uniform lower bound on the cardinality of a prime polynomial Bohr set.

Erdös and Selfridge first showed that the product of consecutive integers cannot be a perfect power. Later, this result was generalized to polynomial values by various authors. They demonstrated that the product of consecutive polynomial values cannot be the perfect power for a suitable polynomial. In this article, we consider a related problem to the product of consecutive integers. We consider all sequences of polynomial values from a given interval whose products are almost perfect powers. We study the size of these powers and give an asymptotic result. We also define a group theoretic invariant, which is a natural generalization of the Davenport constant. We provide a non-trivial upper bound of this group theoretic invariant.

For $E \subset \mathbb {N}$, a subset $R \subset \mathbb {N}$ is E-intersective if for every $A \subset E$ having positive relative density, $R \cap (A - A) \neq \varnothing $. We say that R is chromatically E-intersective if for every finite partition $E=\bigcup _{i=1}^k E_i$, there exists i such that $R\cap (E_i-E_i)\neq \varnothing $. When $E=\mathbb {N}$, we recover the usual notions of intersectivity and chromatic intersectivity. We investigate to what extent the known intersectivity results hold in the relative setting when $E = \mathbb {P}$, the set of primes, or other sparse subsets of $\mathbb {N}$. Among other things, we prove the following: (1) the set of shifted Chen primes $\mathbb {P}_{\mathrm {Chen}} + 1$ is both intersective and $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (2) there exists an intersective set that is not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (3) every $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set is intersective; (4) there exists a chromatically $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set which is not intersective (and therefore not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective).

Using the special value at $u=1$ of Artin–Ihara L-functions, we associate to every $\mathbb {Z}$-cover of a finite connected graph a polynomial, which we call the Ihara polynomial. We show that the number of spanning trees for the finite intermediate graphs of such a cover can be expressed in terms of the Pierce–Lehmer sequence associated to a factor of the Ihara polynomial. This allows us to express the asymptotic growth of the number of spanning trees in terms of the Mahler measure of this polynomial. Specialising to the situation where the base graph is a bouquet or the dumbbell graph gives us back previous results in the literature for circulant and I-graphs (including the generalised Petersen graphs). We also express the p-adic valuation of the number of spanning trees of the finite intermediate graphs in terms of the p-adic Mahler measure of the Ihara polynomial. When applied to a particular $\mathbb {Z}$-cover, our result gives us back Lengyel’s calculation of the p-adic valuations of Fibonacci numbers.

We show that every finite coloring of the rationals contains monochromatic sets of the form $\{x,y,xy,x+y\}$.

One variant of the q-Catalan polynomials is defined in terms of Gaussian polynomials by

$$ \begin{align*}\mathcal{C}_k(q)=\bigg[\begin{matrix}{2k}\\ {k}\end{matrix}\bigg]_q-q \bigg[\begin{matrix}{2k}\\ {k+1} \end{matrix}\bigg]_q.\end{align*} $$

Liu [‘On a congruence involving q-Catalan numbers’, C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris 358 (2020), 211–215] studied congruences of the form $\sum _{k=0}^{n-1} q^k\mathcal {C}_k$ modulo the cyclotomic polynomial $\Phi _n(q)^2$, provided that $n\equiv \pm 1\pmod 3$. Apparently, the case $n\equiv 0\pmod 3$ has been missing from the literature. Our primary purpose is to fill this gap. In addition, we discuss a certain fascinating link to Dirichlet character sum identities.

Using properties of Ramanujan’s theta functions, we give an elementary proof of Hirschhorn’s conjecture on $2^n$-dissection of Euler’s product $E(q):=(q;q)_\infty $.

We present a new version of a generalisation to elliptic nets of a theorem of Ward [‘Memoir on elliptic divisibility sequences’, Amer. J. Math. 70 (1948), 31–74] on symmetry of elliptic divisibility sequences. Our results cover all that is known today.

Let Mn and Tn denote the nth Motzkin number and the nth central trinomial coefficient respectively. We prove that for any prime $p\ge 5$,

\begin{equation*}\begin{aligned}\\[-22pt]&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}M_k^2\equiv \left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\left(2-6p\right)\pmod{p^2},\\&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}kM_k^2\equiv \left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\left(9p-1\right)\pmod{p^2},\\&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}T_kM_k\equiv \frac{4}{3}\left(\frac{p}{3}\right)+\frac{p}{6}\left(1-9\left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\right)\pmod{p^2},\\[-6pt]\end{aligned}\end{equation*}

where $\left(-\right)$ is the Legendre symbol. These results confirm three supercongruences conjectured by Z.-W. Sun in 2010.

For $g \geqslant 2$, we show that the number of positive integers at most X which can be written as sum of two base g palindromes is at most ${X}/{\log^c X}$. This answers a question of Baxter, Cilleruelo and Luca.

We establish a q-analogue of a supercongruence related to a supercongruence of Rodriguez-Villegas, which extends a q-congruence of Guo and Zeng [‘Some q-analogues of supercongruences of Rodriguez-Villegas’, J. Number Theory 145 (2014), 301–316]. The important ingredients in the proof include Andrews’ $_4\phi _3$ terminating identity.

Let $k\geq 4$ be an integer. We prove that the set $\mathcal {O}$ of all nonzero generalised octagonal numbers is a k-additive uniqueness set for the set of multiplicative functions. That is, if a multiplicative function $f_k$ satisfies the condition

$$ \begin{align*} f_k(x_1+x_2+\cdots+x_k)=f_k(x_1)+f_k(x_2)+\cdots+f_k(x_k) \end{align*} $$

for arbitrary $x_1,\ldots ,x_k\in \mathcal {O}$, then $f_k$ is the identity function $f_k(n)=n$ for all $n\in \mathbb {N}$. We also show that $f_2$ and $f_3$ are not determined uniquely.

Let $m,\,r\in {\mathbb {Z}}$ and $\omega \in {\mathbb {R}}$ satisfy $0\leqslant r\leqslant m$ and $\omega \geqslant 1$. Our main result is a generalized continued fraction for an expression involving the partial binomial sum $s_m(r) = \sum _{i=0}^r\binom{m}{i}$. We apply this to create new upper and lower bounds for $s_m(r)$ and thus for $g_{\omega,m}(r)=\omega ^{-r}s_m(r)$. We also bound an integer $r_0 \in \{0,\,1,\,\ldots,\,m\}$ such that $g_{\omega,m}(0)<\cdots < g_{\omega,m}(r_0-1)\leqslant g_{\omega,m}(r_0)$ and $g_{\omega,m}(r_0)>\cdots >g_{\omega,m}(m)$. For real $\omega \geqslant \sqrt 3$ we prove that $r_0\in \{\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor,\,\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor +1\}$, and also $r_0 =\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor$ for $\omega \in \{3,\,4,\,\ldots \}$ or $\omega =2$ and $3\nmid m$.

We determine the characteristic polynomials of the matrices $[q^{\,j-k}+t]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$ and $[q^{\,j+k}+t]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$ for any complex number $q\not =0,1$. As an application, for complex numbers $a,b,c$ with $b\not =0$ and $a^2\not =4b$, and the sequence $(w_m)_{m\in \mathbb Z}$ with $w_{m+1}=aw_m-bw_{m-1}$ for all $m\in \mathbb Z$, we determine the exact value of $\det [w_{\,j-k}+c\delta _{jk}]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$.

A linear equation $E$ is said to be sparse if there is $c\gt 0$ so that every subset of $[n]$ of size $n^{1-c}$ contains a solution of $E$ in distinct integers. The problem of characterising the sparse equations, first raised by Ruzsa in the 90s, is one of the most important open problems in additive combinatorics. We say that $E$ in $k$ variables is abundant if every subset of $[n]$ of size $\varepsilon n$ contains at least $\text{poly}(\varepsilon )\cdot n^{k-1}$ solutions of $E$. It is clear that every abundant $E$ is sparse, and Girão, Hurley, Illingworth, and Michel asked if the converse implication also holds. In this note, we show that this is the case for every $E$ in four variables. We further discuss a generalisation of this problem which applies to all linear equations.

In this paper, we prove that the bound

\begin{equation*}\max \{ |8A-7A|,|5f(A)-4f(A)| \} \gg |A|^{\frac{3}{2} + \frac{1}{54}}\end{equation*}

$A \subset \mathbb R$

\begin{equation*}\max \{ |16A|, |A^{(16)}| \} \gg |A|^{\frac{3}{2} + c},\end{equation*}

$c\gt 0$

$\mathbb R$

$3/2$

\begin{equation*}|AA| \leq K|A| \implies \,\forall d \in \mathbb R \setminus \{0 \}, \,\, |\{(a,b) \in A \times A : a-b=d \}| \ll K^C |A|^{\frac{2}{3}-c^{\prime}},\end{equation*}

$c,C \gt 0$

A set $S\subset {\mathbb {N}}$ is a Sidon set if all pairwise sums $s_1+s_2$ (for $s_1, s_2\in S$, $s_1\leqslant s_2$) are distinct. A set $S\subset {\mathbb {N}}$ is an asymptotic basis of order 3 if every sufficiently large integer $n$ can be written as the sum of three elements of $S$. In 1993, Erdős, Sárközy and Sós asked whether there exists a set $S$ with both properties. We answer this question in the affirmative. Our proof relies on a deep result of Sawin on the $\mathbb {F}_q[t]$-analogue of Montgomery's conjecture for convolutions of the von Mangoldt function.