We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Let $\nu _{f}(n)$ be the $n\mathrm{th}$ normalized Fourier coefficient of a Hecke–Maass cusp form $f$ for ${\rm SL }(2,\mathbb{Z})$ and let $\alpha $ be a real number. We prove strong oscillations of the argument of $\nu _{f}(n)\mu (n) \exp (2\pi i n \alpha )$ as $n$ takes consecutive integral values.
A natural number $n$ is called abundant if the sum of the proper divisors of $n$ exceeds $n$. For example, $12$ is abundant, since $1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 6= 16$. In 1929, Bessel-Hagen asked whether or not the set of abundant numbers possesses an asymptotic density. In other words, if $A(x)$ denotes the count of abundant numbers belonging to the interval $[1, x] $, does $A(x)/ x$ tend to a limit? Four years later, Davenport answered Bessel-Hagen’s question in the affirmative. Calling this density $\Delta $, it is now known that $0. 24761\lt \Delta \lt 0. 24766$, so that just under one in four numbers are abundant. We show that $A(x)- \Delta x\lt x/ \mathrm{exp} (\mathop{(\log x)}\nolimits ^{1/ 3} )$ for all large $x$. We also study the behavior of the corresponding error term for the count of so-called $\alpha $-abundant numbers.
Let $\sigma (n)= {\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{d\mid n} d$ be the usual sum-of-divisors function. In 1933, Davenport showed that $n/ \sigma (n)$ possesses a continuous distribution function. In other words, the limit $D(u): = \lim _{x\rightarrow \infty }(1/ x){\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{n\leq x, n/ \sigma (n)\leq u} 1$ exists for all $u\in [0, 1] $ and varies continuously with $u$. We study the behaviour of the sums ${\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{n\leq x, n/ \sigma (n)\leq u} f(n)$ for certain complex-valued multiplicative functions $f$. Our results cover many of the more frequently encountered functions, including $\varphi (n)$, $\tau (n)$ and $\mu (n)$. They also apply to the representation function for sums of two squares, yielding the following analogue of Davenport’s result: for all $u\in [0, 1] $, the limit
Let $k\geq 2$ and $\Pi (n)= { \mathop{\prod }\nolimits}_{i= 1}^{k} ({a}_{i} n+ {b}_{i} )$ for some integers ${a}_{i} , {b}_{i} $ ($1\leq i\leq k$). Suppose that $\Pi (n)$ has no fixed prime divisors. Weighted sieves have shown for infinitely many integers $n$ that the number of prime factors $\Omega (\Pi (n))$ of $\Pi (n)$ is at most ${r}_{k} $, for some integer ${r}_{k} $ depending only on $k$. We use a new kind of weighted sieve to improve the possible values of ${r}_{k} $ when $k\geq 4$.
We investigate sums of mixed powers involving two squares and three biquadrates. In particular, subject to the truth of the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis and the Elliott–Halberstam conjecture, we show that all large natural numbers $n$ with $8\nmid n$, $n\not\equiv 2~(\text{mod} ~3)$ and $n\not\equiv 14~(\text{mod} ~16)$ are the sum of two squares and three biquadrates.
Building on the concept of pretentious multiplicative functions, we give a new and largely elementary proof of the best result known on the counting function of primes in arithmetic progressions.
Let $L(s, E)= {\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{n\geq 1} {a}_{n} {n}^{- s} $ be the $L$-series corresponding to an elliptic curve $E$ defined over $ \mathbb{Q} $ and $\mathbf{u} = \mathop{\{ {u}_{m} \} }\nolimits_{m\geq 0} $ be a nondegenerate binary recurrence sequence. We prove that if ${ \mathcal{M} }_{E} $ is the set of $n$ such that ${a}_{n} \not = 0$ and ${ \mathcal{N} }_{E} $ is the subset of $n\in { \mathcal{M} }_{E} $ such that $\vert {a}_{n} \vert = \vert {u}_{m} \vert $ holds with some integer $m\geq 0$, then ${ \mathcal{N} }_{E} $ is of density $0$ as a subset of ${ \mathcal{M} }_{E} $.
We prove that when $(a, m)= 1$ and $a$ is a quadratic residue $\hspace{0.167em} \mathrm{mod} \hspace{0.167em} m$, there are infinitely many Carmichael numbers in the arithmetic progression $a\hspace{0.167em} \mathrm{mod} \hspace{0.167em} m$. Indeed the number of them up to $x$ is at least ${x}^{1/ 5} $ when $x$ is large enough (depending on $m$).
Let $K$ be a number field of degree $n$, and let $d_K$ be its discriminant. Then, under the Artin conjecture, the generalized Riemann hypothesis and a certain zero-density hypothesis, we show that the upper and lower bounds of the logarithmic derivatives of Artin $L$-functions attached to $K$ at $s=1$ are $\log \log |d_K|$ and $-(n-1) \log \log |d_K|$, respectively. Unconditionally, we show that there are infinitely many number fields with the extreme logarithmic derivatives; they are families of number fields whose Galois closures have the Galois group $C_n$ for $n=2,3,4,6$, $D_n$ for $n=3,4,5$, $S_4$ or $A_5$.
with $x, y, z$ positive integers. The Erdős–Straus conjecture asserts that $f(n)\gt 0$ for every $n\geq 2$. In this paper we obtain a number of upper and lower bounds for $f(n)$ or $f(p)$ for typical values of natural numbers $n$ and primes $p$. For instance, we establish that
These upper and lower bounds show that a typical prime has a small number of solutions to the Erdős–Straus Diophantine equation; small, when compared with other additive problems, like Waring’s problem.
Two arithmetic functions $f$ and $g$ form a Möbius pair if $f(n)= {\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{d\mid n} g(d)$ for all natural numbers $n$. In that case, $g$ can be expressed in terms of $f$ by the familiar Möbius inversion formula of elementary number theory. In a previous paper, the first-named author showed that if the members $f$ and $g$ of a Möbius pair are both finitely supported, then both functions vanish identically. Here we prove two significantly stronger versions of this uncertainty principle. A corollary is that in a nonzero Möbius pair, one cannot have both ${\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{f(n)\not = 0} 1/ n\lt \infty $ and ${\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{g(n)\not = 0} 1/ n\lt \infty $.
We study the distribution of the size of Selmer groups arising from a 2-isogeny and its dual 2-isogeny for quadratic twists of elliptic curves with a non-trivial $2$-torsion point over $\mathbb {Q}$. This complements the work [Xiong and Zaharescu, Distribution of Selmer groups of quadratic twists of a family of elliptic curves. Adv. Math.219 (2008), 523–553] which studied the same subject for elliptic curves with full 2-torsions over $\mathbb {Q}$ and generalizes [Feng and Xiong, On Selmer groups and Tate–Shafarevich groups for elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-n^3$. Mathematika58 (2012), 236–274.] for the special elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-n^3$. It is shown that the 2-ranks of these groups all follow the same distribution and in particular, the mean value is $\sqrt {\frac {1}{2}\log \log X}$ for square-free positive integers $n \le X$ as $X \to \infty $.
Given an elliptic curve E and a positive integer N, we consider the problem of counting the number of primes p for which the reduction of E modulo p possesses exactly N points over 𝔽p. On average (over a family of elliptic curves), we show bounds that are significantly better than what is trivially obtained by the Hasse bound. Under some additional hypotheses, including a conjecture concerning the short-interval distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the average.
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) effective upper bounds on lifting for solutions of congruences in affine homogeneous varieties;
(2) effective upper bounds on the number of integral points on general subvarieties of semisimple group varieties;
(3) effective lower bounds on the number of almost prime points on symmetric varieties;
(4) effective upper bounds on almost prime solutions of congruences in homogeneous varieties.
For a class of multiplicative integer-valued functions $f$ the distribution of the sequence $f(n)$ in restricted residue classes modulo $N$ is studied. We consider a property weaker than weak uniform distribution and study it for polynomial-like multiplicative functions, in particular for $\varphi (n)$ and $\sigma (n)$.
We investigate the behaviour of the function $L_{\alpha }(x) = \sum _{n\leq x}\lambda (n)/n^{\alpha }$, where $\lambda (n)$ is the Liouville function and $\alpha $ is a real parameter. The case where $\alpha =0$ was investigated by Pólya; the case $\alpha =1$, by Turán. The question of the existence of sign changes in both of these cases is related to the Riemann hypothesis. Using both analytic and computational methods, we investigate similar problems for the more general family $L_{\alpha }(x)$, where $0\leq \alpha \leq 1$, and their relationship to the Riemann hypothesis and other properties of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function. The case where $\alpha =1/2$is of particular interest.
We obtain the approximate functional equation for the Rankin–Selberg zeta function in the critical strip and, in particular, on the critical line $\operatorname {Re} s= \frac {1}{2}$.
We consider the size of large character sums, proving new lower bounds for Δ(N,q)=sup χ≠χ0 mod q∣∑ n<Nχ(n)∣ in almost all ranges of N. The proofs use the resonance method and saddle point analysis.