We classify generically transitive actions of semi-direct products on ℙ2. Motivated by the program to study the distribution of rational points on del Pezzo surfaces (Manin's conjecture), we determine all (possibly singular) del Pezzo surfaces that are equivariant compactifications of homogeneous spaces for semi-direct products .

Let $a$ and $m$ be relatively prime positive integers with $a>1$ and $m>2$. Let ${\it\phi}(m)$ be Euler’s totient function. The quotient $E_{m}(a)=(a^{{\it\phi}(m)}-1)/m$ is called the Euler quotient of $m$ with base $a$. By Euler’s theorem, $E_{m}(a)$ is an integer. In this paper, we consider the Diophantine equation $E_{m}(a)=x^{l}$ in integers $x>1,l>1$. We conjecture that this equation has exactly five solutions $(a,m,x,l)$ except for $(l,m)=(2,3),(2,6)$, and show that if the equation has solutions, then $m=p^{s}$ or $m=2p^{s}$ with $p$ an odd prime and $s\geq 1$.

Schinzel’s Hypothesis (H) was used by Colliot-Thélène and Sansuc, and later by Serre, Swinnerton-Dyer and others, to prove that the Brauer–Manin obstruction controls the Hasse principle and weak approximation on pencils of conics and similar varieties. We show that when the ground field is $\mathbb{Q}$ and the degenerate geometric fibres of the pencil are all defined over $\mathbb{Q}$, one can use this method to obtain unconditional results by replacing Hypothesis (H) with the finite complexity case of the generalised Hardy–Littlewood conjecture recently established by Green, Tao and Ziegler.

A conjecture of Manin predicts the distribution of rational points on Fano varieties. We provide a framework for proofs of Manin’s conjecture for del Pezzo surfaces over imaginary quadratic fields, using universal torsors. Some of our tools are formulated over arbitrary number fields. As an application, we prove Manin’s conjecture over imaginary quadratic fields $K$ for the quartic del Pezzo surface $S$ of singularity type ${\boldsymbol{A}}_{3}$ with five lines given in ${\mathbb{P}}_{K}^{4}$ by the equations ${x}_{0}{x}_{1}-{x}_{2}{x}_{3}={x}_{0}{x}_{3}+{x}_{1}{x}_{3}+{x}_{2}{x}_{4}=0$.

Let $Q(N;q,a)$ be the number of squares in the arithmetic progression $qn+a$ , for $n=0$ , $1,\ldots,N-1$ , and let $Q(N)$ be the maximum of $Q(N;q,a)$ over all non-trivial arithmetic progressions $qn + a$ . Rudin’s conjecture claims that $Q(N)=O(\sqrt{N})$ , and in its stronger form that $Q(N)=Q(N;24,1)$ if $N\ge 6$ . We prove the conjecture above for $6\le N\le 52$ . We even prove that the arithmetic progression $24n+1$ is the only one, up to equivalence, that contains $Q(N)$ squares for the values of $N$ such that $Q(N)$ increases, for $7\le N\le 52$ ( $N=8,13,16,23,27,36,41$ and $52$ ).

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

Let $m$, $a$, $c$ be positive integers with $a\equiv 3, 5~({\rm mod} \hspace{0.334em} 8)$. We show that when $1+ c= {a}^{2} $, the exponential Diophantine equation $\mathop{({m}^{2} + 1)}\nolimits ^{x} + \mathop{(c{m}^{2} - 1)}\nolimits ^{y} = \mathop{(am)}\nolimits ^{z} $ has only the positive integer solution $(x, y, z)= (1, 1, 2)$ under the condition $m\equiv \pm 1~({\rm mod} \hspace{0.334em} a)$, except for the case $(m, a, c)= (1, 3, 8)$, where there are only two solutions: $(x, y, z)= (1, 1, 2), ~(5, 2, 4). $ In particular, when $a= 3$, the equation $\mathop{({m}^{2} + 1)}\nolimits ^{x} + \mathop{(8{m}^{2} - 1)}\nolimits ^{y} = \mathop{(3m)}\nolimits ^{z} $ has only the positive integer solution $(x, y, z)= (1, 1, 2)$, except if $m= 1$. The proof is based on elementary methods and Baker’s method.

Let $q$ be an odd prime such that ${q}^{t} + 1= 2{c}^{s} $, where $c, t$ are positive integers and $s= 1, 2$. We show that the Diophantine equation ${x}^{2} + {q}^{m} = {c}^{n} $ has only the positive integer solution $(x, m, n)= ({c}^{s} - 1, t, 2s)$ under some conditions. The proof is based on elementary methods and a result concerning the Diophantine equation $({x}^{n} - 1)/ (x- 1)= {y}^{2} $ due to Ljunggren. We also verify that when $2\leq c\leq 30$ with $c\not = 12, 24$, the Diophantine equation ${x}^{2} + \mathop{(2c- 1)}\nolimits ^{m} = {c}^{n} $ has only the positive integer solution $(x, m, n)= (c- 1, 1, 2). $

Let $(a, b, c)$ be a primitive Pythagorean triple satisfying ${a}^{2} + {b}^{2} = {c}^{2} . $ In 1956, Jeśmanowicz conjectured that for any given positive integer $n$ the only solution of $\mathop{(an)}\nolimits ^{x} + \mathop{(bn)}\nolimits ^{y} = \mathop{(cn)}\nolimits ^{z} $ in positive integers is $x= y= z= 2. $ In this paper, for the primitive Pythagorean triple $(a, b, c)= (4{k}^{2} - 1, 4k, 4{k}^{2} + 1)$ with $k= {2}^{s} $ for some positive integer $s\geq 0$, we prove the conjecture when $n\gt 1$ and certain divisibility conditions are satisfied.

We use bounds of mixed character sum to study the distribution of solutions to certain polynomial systems of congruences modulo a prime $p$. In particular, we obtain nontrivial results about the number of solutions in boxes with the side length below ${p}^{1/ 2} $, which seems to be the limit of more general methods based on the bounds of exponential sums along varieties.

We solve the equation ${x}^{a} + {x}^{b} + 1= {y}^{q} $ in positive integers $x, y, a, b$ and $q$ with $a\gt b$ and $q\geq 2$ coprime to $\phi (x)$. This requires a combination of a variety of techniques from effective Diophantine approximation, including lower bounds for linear forms in complex and $p$-adic logarithms, the hypergeometric method of Thue and Siegel applied $p$-adically, local methods, and the algorithmic resolution of Thue equations.

Given an intersection of two quadrics $X\subset { \mathbb{P} }^{m- 1} $, with $m\geq 9$, the quantitative arithmetic of the set $X( \mathbb{Q} )$ is investigated under the assumption that the singular locus of $X$ consists of a pair of conjugate singular points defined over $ \mathbb{Q} (i)$.

We use a generalisation of Vinogradov’s mean value theorem of Parsell et al. [‘Near-optimal mean value estimates for multidimensional Weyl sums’, arXiv:1205.6331] and ideas of Schmidt [‘Irregularities of distribution. IX’, Acta Arith. 27 (1975), 385–396] to give nontrivial bounds for the number of solutions to polynomial congruences, when the solutions lie in a very general class of sets, including all convex sets.

Nous démontrons, sous la forme forte conjecturée par Peyre, la conjecture de Manin pour les surfaces de Châtelet dont les équations sont du type ${y}^{2} + {z}^{2} = P(x, 1)$, où $P$ est une forme binaire quartique à coefficients entiers irréductible sur $ \mathbb{Q} [i] $ ou produit de deux formes quadratiques à coefficients entiers irréductibles sur $ \mathbb{Q} [i] $. De plus, nous fournissons une estimation explicite du terme d’erreur de la formule asymptotique sous-jacente. Cela finalise essentiellement la validation de la conjecture de Manin pour l’ensemble des surfaces de Châtelet. La preuve s’appuie sur deux méthodes nouvelles, concernant, du part, les estimations en moyenne d’oscillations locales de caractères sur les diviseurs, et, d’autre part, les majorations de certaines fonctions arithmétiques de formes binaires.

Let $a, b, c$ be relatively prime positive integers such that ${a}^{2} + {b}^{2} = {c}^{2} $. In 1956, Jeśmanowicz conjectured that for any positive integer $n$, the only solution of $\mathop{(an)}\nolimits ^{x} + \mathop{(bn)}\nolimits ^{y} = \mathop{(cn)}\nolimits ^{z} $ in positive integers is $(x, y, z)= (2, 2, 2)$. In this paper, we consider Jeśmanowicz’ conjecture for Pythagorean triples $(a, b, c)$ if $a= c- 2$ and $c$ is a Fermat prime. For example, we show that Jeśmanowicz’ conjecture is true for $(a, b, c)= (3, 4, 5)$, $(15, 8, 17)$, $(255, 32, 257)$, $(65535, 512, 65537)$.

Let $p$ be a prime. In this paper, we present a detailed $p$-adic analysis on factorials and double factorials and their congruences. We give good bounds for the $p$-adic sizes of the coefficients of the divided universal Bernoulli number ${B}_{n} / n$ when $n$ is divisible by $p- 1$. Using these, we then establish the universal Kummer congruences modulo powers of a prime $p$ for the divided universal Bernoulli numbers ${B}_{n} / n$ when $n$ is divisible by $p- 1$.

For any positive integer $n$, let $f(n)$ denote the number of solutions to the Diophantine equation

$$\begin{eqnarray*}\frac{4}{n} = \frac{1}{x} + \frac{1}{y} + \frac{1}{z}\end{eqnarray*}$$

$x, y, z$

$f(n)\gt 0$

$n\geq 2$

$f(n)$

$f(p)$

$n$

$p$

$$\begin{eqnarray*}N\hspace{0.167em} {\mathop{\log }\nolimits }^{2} N\ll \displaystyle \sum _{p\leq N}f(p)\ll N\hspace{0.167em} {\mathop{\log }\nolimits }^{2} N\log \log N.\end{eqnarray*}$$

Motivated by some earlier Diophantine works on triangular numbers by Ljunggren and Cassels, we consider similar problems for general polygonal numbers.

In [Gorodnik and Nevo, Counting lattice points, J. Reine Angew. Math. 663 (2012), 127–176] an effective solution of the lattice point counting problem in general domains in semisimple S-algebraic groups and affine symmetric varieties was established. The method relies on the mean ergodic theorem for the action of G on G/Γ, and implies uniformity in counting over families of lattice subgroups admitting a uniform spectral gap. In the present paper we extend some methods developed in [Nevo and Sarnak, Prime and almost prime integral points on principal homogeneous spaces, Acta Math. 205 (2010), 361–402] and use them to establish several useful consequences of this property, including:

1. (1) effective upper bounds on lifting for solutions of congruences in affine homogeneous varieties;

2. (2) effective upper bounds on the number of integral points on general subvarieties of semisimple group varieties;

3. (3) effective lower bounds on the number of almost prime points on symmetric varieties;

4. (4) effective upper bounds on almost prime solutions of congruences in homogeneous varieties.

We relate a previous result of ours on families of Diophantine equations having only trivial solutions with a result on the approximation of an algebraic number by products of rational numbers and units. We compare this approximation with a Liouville type estimate, and with an estimate arising from a lower bound for a linear combination of logarithms.