Our work owes its origin to a recent note of Ram Murty [‘Irrationality of zeros of the digamma function’, Number Theory in Memory of Eduard Wirsing (eds. H. Maier, R. Steuding and J. Steuding) (Springer, Cham, 2023), 237–243], in which he proves that all the zeros of the digamma function are irrational with at most one possible exception. We extend this investigation to higher-order polygamma functions.

For an integer $k \geq 2$, let $P_{n}^{(k)}$ be the k-generalised Pell sequence, which starts with $0, \ldots ,0,1$ (k terms), and each term thereafter is given by the recurrence $P_{n}^{(k)} = 2 P_{n-1}^{(k)} +P_{n-2}^{(k)} +\cdots +P_{n-k}^{(k)}$. We search for perfect powers, which are sums or differences of two k-generalised Pell numbers.

We establish an effective improvement on the Liouville inequality for approximation to complex nonreal algebraic numbers by quadratic complex algebraic numbers.

We introduce some generalisations of the Euler–Kronecker constant of a number field and study their arithmetic nature.

Let p be a prime and let r, s be positive integers. In this paper, we prove that the Goormaghtigh equation $(x^m-1)/(x-1)=(y^n-1)/(y-1)$, $x,y,m,n \in {\mathbb {N}}$, $\min \{x,y\}>1$, $\min \{m,n\}>2$ with $(x,y)=(p^r,p^s+1)$ has only one solution $(x,y,m,n)=(2,5,5,3)$. This result is related to the existence of some partial difference sets in combinatorics.

In this paper, for a positive integer n ≥ 1, we look at the size and prime factors of the iterates of the Ramanujan τ function applied to n.

Jeśmanowicz conjectured that $(x,y,z)=(2,2,2)$ is the only positive integer solution of the equation $(*)\; ((\kern1.5pt f^2-g^2)n)^x+(2fgn)^y=((\kern1.5pt f^2+g^2)n)^x$, where n is a positive integer and f, g are positive integers such that $f>g$, $\gcd (\kern1.5pt f,g)=1$ and $f \not \equiv g\pmod 2$. Using Baker’s method, we prove that: (i) if $n>1$, $f \ge 98$ and $g=1$, then $(*)$ has no positive integer solutions $(x,y,z)$ with $x>z>y$; and (ii) if $n>1$, $f=2^rs^2$ and $g=1$, where r, s are positive integers satisfying$(**)\; 2 \nmid s$ and $s<2^{r/2}$, then $(*)$ has no positive integer solutions $(x,y,z)$ with $y>z>x$. Thus, Jeśmanowicz’ conjecture is true if $f=2^rs^2$ and $g=1$, where r, s are positive integers satisfying $(**)$.

Recently E. Bombieri and N. M. Katz (2010) demonstrated that several well-known results about the distribution of values of linear recurrence sequences lead to interesting statements for Frobenius traces of algebraic curves. Here we continue this line of study and establish the Möbius randomness law quantitatively for the normalised form of Frobenius traces.

It is known that the Fourier–Stieltjes coefficients of a nonatomic coin-tossing measure may not vanish at infinity. However, we show that they could vanish at infinity along some integer subsequences, including the sequence ${\{b^{n}\}}_{n\geq 1}$ where $b$ is multiplicatively independent of 2 and the sequence given by the multiplicative semigroup generated by 3 and 5. The proof is based on elementary combinatorics and lower-bound estimates for linear forms in logarithms from transcendental number theory.

In 1965, A. Livingston conjectured the $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$-linear independence of logarithms of values of the sine function at rational arguments. In 2016, S. Pathak disproved the conjecture. In this article, we give a new proof of Livingston’s conjecture using some fundamental trigonometric identities. Moreover, we show that a stronger version of her theorem is true. In fact, we modify this conjecture by introducing a co-primality condition, and in that case we provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the conjecture to be true. Finally, we identify a maximal linearly independent subset of the numbers considered in Livingston’s conjecture.

For $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ an algebraic integer of any degree $n\geqslant 2$, it is known that the discriminants of the orders $\mathbb{Z}[\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}^{k}]$ go to infinity as $k$ goes to infinity. We give a short proof of this result.

We show that two distinct singular moduli $j(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}),j(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}^{\prime })$, such that for some positive integers $m$ and $n$ the numbers $1,j(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})^{m}$ and $j(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}^{\prime })^{n}$ are linearly dependent over $\mathbb{Q}$, generate the same number field of degree at most two. This completes a result of Riffaut [‘Equations with powers of singular moduli’, Int. J. Number Theory, to appear], who proved the above theorem except for two explicit pairs of exceptions consisting of numbers of degree three. The purpose of this article is to treat these two remaining cases.

Inspired by methods of N. P. Smart, we describe an algorithm to determine all Picard curves over $\mathbb{Q}$ with good reduction away from 3, up to $\mathbb{Q}$ -isomorphism. A correspondence between the isomorphism classes of such curves and certain quintic binary forms possessing a rational linear factor is established. An exhaustive list of integral models is determined and an application to a question of Ihara is discussed.

In an attempt to resolve a folklore conjecture of Erdös regarding the non-vanishing at $s\,=\,1$ of the $L$ -series attached to a periodic arithmetical function with period $q$ and values in $\left\{ -1,\,1 \right\}$ , Livingston conjectured the $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$ -linear independence of logarithms of certain algebraic numbers. In this paper, we disprove Livingston’s conjecture for composite $q\,\ge \,4$ , highlighting that a new approach is required to settle Erdös conjecture. We also prove that the conjecture is true for prime $q\,\ge \,3$ , and indicate that more ingredients will be needed to settle Erdös conjecture for prime $q$ .

Let $S=\{q_{1},\ldots ,q_{s}\}$ be a finite, non-empty set of distinct prime numbers. For a non-zero integer $m$ , write $m=q_{1}^{r_{1}}\cdots q_{s}^{r_{s}}M$ , where $r_{1},\ldots ,r_{s}$ are non-negative integers and $M$ is an integer relatively prime to $q_{1}\cdots q_{s}$ . We define the $S$ -part $[m]_{S}$ of $m$ by $[m]_{S}:=q_{1}^{r_{1}}\cdots q_{s}^{r_{s}}$ . Let $(u_{n})_{n\geqslant 0}$ be a linear recurrence sequence of integers. Under certain necessary conditions, we establish that for every $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}>0$ , there exists an integer $n_{0}$ such that $[u_{n}]_{S}\leqslant |u_{n}|^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}}$ holds for $n>n_{0}$ . Our proof is ineffective in the sense that it does not give an explicit value for $n_{0}$ . Under various assumptions on $(u_{n})_{n\geqslant 0}$ , we also give effective, but weaker, upper bounds for $[u_{n}]_{S}$ of the form $|u_{n}|^{1-c}$ , where $c$ is positive and depends only on $(u_{n})_{n\geqslant 0}$ and $S$ .

We improve the known upper bound for the number of Diophantine $D(4)$ -quintuples by using the most recent methods that were developed in the $D(1)$ case. More precisely, we prove that there are at most $6.8587\times 10^{29}$ $D(4)$ -quintuples.

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.

In this paper, we study the non-vanishing and transcendence of special values of a varying class of $L$ -functions and their derivatives. This allows us to investigate the transcendence of Petersson norms of certain weight one modular forms.

Let n be a positive integer. In this paper, we consider the diophantine equationWe prove that this equation has only the positive integer solutions (n, x, y, z) = (1, t, 1, 1), (1, t, 3, 2), (3, 2, 2, 2). Therefore we extend the work done by Leszczyński (Wiadom. Mat., vol. 3, 1959, pp. 37–39) and Makowski (Wiadom. Mat., vol. 9, 1967, pp. 221–224).