We show that if $\mathcal {A}\subset \{1,\ldots,N\}$ has no solutions to $a-b=n^2$ with $a,b\in \mathcal {A}$ and $n\geq 1$, then

\[ \lvert \mathcal{A}\rvert \ll \frac{N}{(\log N)^{c\log\log \log N}} \]

$c>0$

There has been recent interest in a hybrid form of the celebrated conjectures of Hardy–Littlewood and of Chowla. We prove that for any $k,\ell \ge 1$ and distinct integers $h_2,\ldots ,h_k,a_1,\ldots ,a_\ell $, we have:

$$ \begin{align*}\sum_{n\leq X}\mu(n+h_1)\cdots \mu(n+h_k)\Lambda(n+a_1)\cdots\Lambda(n+a_{\ell})=o(X)\end{align*} $$

for all except $o(H)$ values of $h_1\leq H$, so long as $H\geq (\log X)^{\ell +\varepsilon }$. This improves on the range $H\ge (\log X)^{\psi (X)}$, $\psi (X)\to \infty $, obtained in previous work of the first author. Our results also generalise from the Möbius function $\mu $ to arbitrary (non-pretentious) multiplicative functions.

We derive a q-supercongruence modulo the third power of a cyclotomic polynomial with the help of Guo and Zudilin’s method of creative microscoping [‘A q-microscope for supercongruences’, Adv. Math. 346 (2019), 329–358] and the q-Dixon formula. As consequences, we give several supercongruences including

$$ \begin{align*}\sum_{k=0}^{(p-2)/3}\frac{(\frac{2}{3})_k^3}{(1)_k^3}\equiv\frac{p}{2}\frac{(1)_{(p-2)/3}}{(\frac{4}{3})_{(p-2)/3}}\pmod{p^3},\end{align*} $$

where p is a prime with $p\equiv 5\pmod {6}$.

We show that there is a red-blue colouring of $[N]$ with no blue 3-term arithmetic progression and no red arithmetic progression of length $e^{C(\log N)^{3/4}(\log \log N)^{1/4}}$. Consequently, the two-colour van der Waerden number $w(3,k)$ is bounded below by $k^{b(k)}$, where $b(k) = c \big ( \frac {\log k}{\log \log k} \big )^{1/3}$. Previously it had been speculated, supported by data, that $w(3,k) = O(k^2)$.

Recently, Lin and Liu [‘Congruences for the truncated Appell series $F_3$ and $F_4$’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 31(1) (2020), 10–17] confirmed a supercongruence on the truncated Appell series $F_3$. Motivated by their work, we give a generalisation of this supercongruence by establishing a q-supercongruence modulo the fourth power of a cyclotomic polynomial.

For a positive integer n, let $\mathcal T(n)$ denote the set of all integers greater than or equal to n. A sum of generalised m-gonal numbers g is called tight $\mathcal T(n)$-universal if the set of all nonzero integers represented by g is equal to $\mathcal T(n)$. We prove the existence of a minimal tight $\mathcal T(n)$-universality criterion set for a sum of generalised m-gonal numbers for any pair $(m,n)$. To achieve this, we introduce an algorithm giving all candidates for tight $\mathcal T(n)$-universal sums of generalised m-gonal numbers. Furthermore, we provide some experimental results on the classification of tight $\mathcal T(n)$-universal sums of generalised m-gonal numbers.

We call a packing of hyperspheres in n dimensions an Apollonian sphere packing if the spheres intersect tangentially or not at all; they fill the n-dimensional Euclidean space; and every sphere in the packing is a member of a cluster of $n+2$ mutually tangent spheres (and a few more properties described herein). In this paper, we describe an Apollonian packing in eight dimensions that naturally arises from the study of generic nodal Enriques surfaces. The $E_7$, $E_8$ and Reye lattices play roles. We use the packing to generate an Apollonian packing in nine dimensions, and a cross section in seven dimensions that is weakly Apollonian. Maxwell described all three packings but seemed unaware that they are Apollonian. The packings in seven and eight dimensions are different than those found in an earlier paper. In passing, we give a sufficient condition for a Coxeter graph to generate mutually tangent spheres and use this to identify an Apollonian sphere packing in three dimensions that is not the Soddy sphere packing.

Adjacent dyadic systems are pivotal in analysis and related fields to study continuous objects via collections of dyadic ones. In our prior work (joint with Jiang, Olson, and Wei), we describe precise necessary and sufficient conditions for two dyadic systems on the real line to be adjacent. Here, we extend this work to all dimensions, which turns out to have many surprising difficulties due to the fact that $d+1$, not $2^d$, grids is the optimal number in an adjacent dyadic system in $\mathbb {R}^d$. As a byproduct, we show that a collection of $d+1$ dyadic systems in $\mathbb {R}^d$ is adjacent if and only if the projection of any two of them onto any coordinate axis are adjacent on $\mathbb {R}$. The underlying geometric structures that arise in this higher-dimensional generalization are interesting objects themselves, ripe for future study; these lead us to a compact, geometric description of our main result. We describe these structures, along with what adjacent dyadic (and n-adic, for any n) systems look like, from a variety of contexts, relating them to previous work, as well as illustrating a specific exa.

We formulate a strengthening of the Zariski dense orbit conjecture for birational maps of dynamical degree one. So, given a quasiprojective variety X defined over an algebraically closed field K of characteristic $0$, endowed with a birational self-map $\phi $ of dynamical degree $1$, we expect that either there exists a nonconstant rational function $f:X\dashrightarrow \mathbb {P} ^1$ such that $f\circ \phi =f$, or there exists a proper subvariety $Y\subset X$ with the property that, for any invariant proper subvariety $Z\subset X$, we have that $Z\subseteq Y$. We prove our conjecture for automorphisms $\phi $ of dynamical degree $1$ of semiabelian varieties X. Moreover, we prove a related result for regular dominant self-maps $\phi $ of semiabelian varieties X: assuming that $\phi $ does not preserve a nonconstant rational function, we have that the dynamical degree of $\phi $ is larger than $1$ if and only if the union of all $\phi $-invariant proper subvarieties of X is Zariski dense. We give applications of our results to representation-theoretic questions about twisted homogeneous coordinate rings associated with abelian varieties.

Let $p$ be a rational prime, let $F$ denote a finite, unramified extension of ${{\mathbb {Q}}}_p$, let $K$ be the maximal unramified extension of ${{\mathbb {Q}}}_p$, ${{\overline {K}}}$ some fixed algebraic closure of $K$, and ${{\mathbb {C}}}_p$ be the completion of ${{\overline {K}}}$. Let $G_F$ be the absolute Galois group of $F$. Let $A$ be an abelian variety defined over $F$, with good reduction. Classically, the Fontaine integral was seen as a Hodge–Tate comparison morphism, i.e. as a map $\varphi _{A} \otimes 1_{{{\mathbb {C}}}_p}\colon T_p(A)\otimes _{{{\mathbb {Z}}}_p}{{\mathbb {C}}}_p\to \operatorname {Lie}(A)(F)\otimes _F{{\mathbb {C}}}_p(1)$, and as such it is surjective and has a large kernel. This paper starts with the observation that if we do not tensor $T_p(A)$ with ${{\mathbb {C}}}_p$, then the Fontaine integral is often injective. In particular, it is proved that if $T_p(A)^{G_K} = 0$, then $\varphi _A$ is injective. As an application, we extend the Fontaine integral to a perfectoid like universal cover of $A$ and show that if $T_p(A)^{G_K} = 0$, then $A(\overline {K})$ has a type of $p$-adic uniformization, which resembles the classical complex uniformization.

We show that the theory of Galois actions of a torsion Abelian group A is companionable if and only if, for each prime p, the p-primary part of A is either finite or it coincides with the Prüfer p-group. We also provide a model-theoretic description of the model companions we obtain.

Recent works at the interface of algebraic combinatorics, algebraic geometry, number theory and topology have provided new integer-valued invariants on integer partitions. It is natural to consider the distribution of partitions when sorted by these invariants in congruence classes. We consider the prominent situations that arise from extensions of the Nekrasov–Okounkov hook product formula and from Betti numbers of various Hilbert schemes of n points on ${\mathbb {C}}^2$. For the Hilbert schemes, we prove that homology is equidistributed as $n\to \infty $. For t-hooks, we prove distributions that are often not equidistributed. The cases where $t\in \{2, 3\}$ stand out, as there are congruence classes where such counts are zero. To obtain these distributions, we obtain analytic results of independent interest. We determine the asymptotics, near roots of unity, of the ubiquitous infinite products

$$ \begin{align*}F_1(\xi; q):=\prod_{n=1}^{\infty}\left(1-\xi q^n\right), \ \ \ F_2(\xi; q):=\prod_{n=1}^{\infty}\left(1-(\xi q)^n\right) \ \ \ {\mathrm{and}}\ \ \ F_3(\xi; q):=\prod_{n=1}^{\infty}\left(1-\xi^{-1}(\xi q)^n\right). \end{align*} $$

Let $\mathcal {C}_n =\left [\chi _{\lambda }(\mu )\right ]_{\lambda , \mu }$ be the character table for $S_n,$ where the indices $\lambda $ and $\mu $ run over the $p(n)$ many integer partitions of $n.$ In this note, we study $Z_{\ell }(n),$ the number of zero entries $\chi _{\lambda }(\mu )$ in $\mathcal {C}_n,$ where $\lambda $ is an $\ell $-core partition of $n.$ For every prime $\ell \geq 5,$ we prove an asymptotic formula of the form

$$ \begin{align*}Z_{\ell}(n)\sim \alpha_{\ell}\cdot \sigma_{\ell}(n+\delta_{\ell})p(n)\gg_{\ell} n^{\frac{\ell-5}{2}}e^{\pi\sqrt{2n/3}}, \end{align*} $$

$\sigma _{\ell }(n)$

$\delta _{\ell }:=(\ell ^2-1)/24,$

$1/\alpha _{\ell }>0$

$L\left (\left ( \frac {\cdot }{\ell } \right ),\frac {\ell -1}{2}\right ).$

$\ell $

$n>\ell ^6/24,$

$\chi _{\lambda }(\mu )=0$

$\lambda $

$\mu $

$\ell $

$Z^*_{\ell }(n)$

$\ell $

$\ell \geq 5$

$$ \begin{align*}Z^*_{\ell}(n)\sim \alpha_{\ell}^2 \cdot \sigma_{\ell}( n+\delta_{\ell})^2 \gg_{\ell} n^{\ell-3}. \end{align*} $$

Let G be a p-adic classical group. The representations in a given Bernstein component can be viewed as modules for the corresponding Hecke algebra—the endomorphism algebra of a pro-generator of the given component. Using Heiermann’s construction of these algebras, we describe the Bernstein components of the Gelfand–Graev representation for $G=\mathrm {SO}(2n+1)$, $\mathrm {Sp}(2n)$, and $\mathrm {O}(2n)$.

In this paper, we prove results about solutions of the Diophantine equation $x^p+y^p=z^3$ over various number fields using the modular method. First, by assuming some standard modularity conjecture, we prove an asymptotic result for general number fields of narrow class number one satisfying some technical conditions. Second, we show that there is an explicit bound such that the equation $x^p+y^p=z^3$ does not have a particular type of solution over $K=\mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {-d})$, where $d=1,7,19,43,67$ whenever p is bigger than this bound. During the course of the proof, we prove various results about the irreducibility of Galois representations, image of inertia groups, and Bianchi newforms.

Let $0\leq \alpha \leq \infty $, $0\leq a\leq b\leq \infty $ and $\psi $ be a positive function defined on $(0,\infty )$. This paper is concerned with the growth of $L_{n}(x)$, the largest digit of the first n terms in the Lüroth expansion of $x\in (0,1]$. Under some suitable assumptions on the function $\psi $, we completely determine the Hausdorff dimensions of the sets

$$\begin{align*}E_\psi(\alpha)=\bigg\{x\in(0,1]: \lim\limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{\log L_n(x)}{\log\psi(n)}=\alpha\bigg\} \end{align*}$$

and

$$\begin{align*}E_\psi(a,b)=\bigg\{x\in(0,1]: \liminf\limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{\log L_n(x)}{\log\psi(n)}=a, \limsup\limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{\log L_n(x)}{\log\psi(n)}=b\bigg\}. \end{align*}$$

We prove an asymptotic expansion of the second moment of the central values of the $\mathrm {GL}(n)\times \mathrm {GL}(n)$ Rankin–Selberg L-functions $L(1/2,\pi \otimes \pi _0)$ for a fixed cuspidal automorphic representation $\pi _0$ over the family of $\pi $ with analytic conductors bounded by a quantity that is tending to infinity. Our proof uses the integral representations of the L-functions, period with regularised Eisenstein series and the invariance properties of the analytic newvectors.

Using a recent breakthrough of Smith [18], we improve the results of Fouvry and Klüners [4, 5] on the solubility of the negative Pell equation. Let $\mathcal {D}$ denote the set of positive squarefree integers having no prime factors congruent to $3$ modulo $4$. Stevenhagen [19] conjectured that the density of d in $\mathcal {D}$ such that the negative Pell equation $x^2-dy^2=-1$ is solvable with $x, y \in \mathbb {Z}$ is $58.1\%$, to the nearest tenth of a percent. By studying the distribution of the $8$-rank of narrow class groups $\operatorname {\mathrm {Cl}}^+(d)$ of $\mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {d})$, we prove that the infimum of this density is at least $53.8\%$.

Andrews [Generalized Frobenius Partitions, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, 301 (American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1984)] defined two families of functions, $\phi _k(n)$ and $c\phi _k(n),$ enumerating two types of combinatorial objects which he called generalised Frobenius partitions. Andrews proved a number of Ramanujan-like congruences satisfied by specific functions within these two families. Numerous other authors proved similar results for these functions, often with a view towards a specific choice of the parameter $k.$ Our goal is to identify an infinite family of values of k such that $\phi _k(n)$ is even for all n in a specific arithmetic progression; in particular, we prove that, for all positive integers $\ell ,$ all primes $p\geq 5$ and all values $r, 0 < r < p,$ such that $24r+1$ is a quadratic nonresidue modulo $p,$

$$ \begin{align*} \phi_{p\ell-1}(pn+r) \equiv 0 \pmod{2} \end{align*} $$

for all $n\geq 0.$ Our proof of this result is truly elementary, relying on a lemma from Andrews’ memoir, classical q-series results and elementary generating function manipulations. Such a result, which holds for infinitely many values of $k,$ is rare in the study of arithmetic properties satisfied by generalised Frobenius partitions, primarily because of the unwieldy nature of the generating functions in question.

We use a linear algebra interpretation of the action of Hecke operators on Drinfeld cusp forms to prove that when the dimension of the $\mathbb {C}_\infty $-vector space $S_{k,m}(\mathrm {{GL}}_2(\mathbb {F}_q[t]))$ is one, the Hecke operator $\mathbf {T}_t$ is injective on $S_{k,m}(\mathrm {{GL}}_2(\mathbb {F}_q[t]))$ and $S_{k,m}(\Gamma _0(t))$ is a direct sum of oldforms and newforms.