We provide a uniform bound on the partial sums of multiplicative functions under very general hypotheses. As an application, we give a nearly optimal estimate for the count of $n \le x$ for which the Alladi–Erdős function $A(n) = \sum_{p^k \parallel n} k p$ takes values in a given residue class modulo q, where q varies uniformly up to a fixed power of $\log x$. We establish a similar result for the equidistribution of the Euler totient function $\phi(n)$ among the coprime residues to the ‘correct’ moduli q that vary uniformly in a similar range and also quantify the failure of equidistribution of the values of $\phi(n)$ among the coprime residue classes to the ‘incorrect’ moduli.

We show that for any set D of at least two digits in a given base b, almost all even integers taking digits only in D when written in base b satisfy the Goldbach conjecture. More formally, if $\mathcal {A}$ is the set of numbers whose digits base b are exclusively from D, almost all elements of $\mathcal {A}$ satisfy the Goldbach conjecture. Moreover, the number of even integers in $\mathcal {A}$ which are less than X and not representable as the sum of two primes is less than $|\mathcal {A}\cap \{1,\ldots ,X\}|^{1-\delta }$.

Let X be a smooth projective variety defined over a number field K. We give an upper bound for the generalised greatest common divisor of a point $x\in X$ with respect to an irreducible subvariety $Y\subseteq X$ also defined over K. To prove the result, we establish a rather uniform Riemann–Roch-type inequality.

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.

Describing the equality conditions of the Alexandrov–Fenchel inequality [Ale37] has been a major open problem for decades. We prove that in the case of convex polytopes, this description is not in the polynomial hierarchy unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to a finite level. This is the first hardness result for the problem and is a complexity counterpart of the recent result by Shenfeld and van Handel [SvH23], which gave a geometric characterization of the equality conditions. The proof involves Stanley’s [Sta81] order polytopes and employs poset theoretic technology.

For fixed m and a, we give an explicit description of those subsets of ${\mathbb F}_{q}$, q odd, for which both x and $mx+a$ are quadratic residues (and other combinations). These results extend and refine results that date back to Gauss.

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.

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.

We devise schemes for producing, in the least possible time, p identical objects with n agents that work at differing speeds. This involves halting the process to transfer production across agent types. For the case of two types of agent, we construct schemes based on the Euclidean algorithm that seeks to minimize the number of pauses in production.

For any positive integer n, let $\sigma (n)$ be the sum of all positive divisors of n. We prove that for every integer k with $1\leq k\leq 29$ and $(k,30)=1,$

$$ \begin{align*} \sum_{n\leq K}\sigma(30n)>\sum_{n\leq K}\sigma(30n+k) \end{align*} $$

for all $K\in \mathbb {N},$ which gives a positive answer to a problem posed by Pongsriiam [‘Sums of divisors on arithmetic progressions’, Period. Math. Hungar. 88 (2024), 443–460].

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.

For $\lambda \in (0,\,1/2]$ let $K_\lambda \subset \mathbb {R}$ be a self-similar set generated by the iterated function system $\{\lambda x,\, \lambda x+1-\lambda \}$. Given $x\in (0,\,1/2)$, let $\Lambda (x)$ be the set of $\lambda \in (0,\,1/2]$ such that $x\in K_\lambda$. In this paper we show that $\Lambda (x)$ is a topological Cantor set having zero Lebesgue measure and full Hausdorff dimension. Furthermore, we show that for any $y_1,\,\ldots,\, y_p\in (0,\,1/2)$ there exists a full Hausdorff dimensional set of $\lambda \in (0,\,1/2]$ such that $y_1,\,\ldots,\, y_p \in K_\lambda$.

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*}

$c,C \gt 0$

Liu [‘Supercongruences for truncated Appell series’, Colloq. Math. 158(2) (2019), 255–263] and Lin and Liu [‘Congruences for the truncated Appell series $F_3$ and $F_4$’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 31(1) (2020), 10–17] confirmed four supercongruences for truncated Appell series. Motivated by their work, we give a new supercongruence for the truncated Appell series $F_{1}$, together with two generalisations of this supercongruence, by establishing its q-analogues.

We prove the following conjecture of Z.-W. Sun [‘On congruences related to central binomial coefficients’, J. Number Theory 13(11) (2011), 2219–2238]. Let p be an odd prime. Then

$$ \begin{align*} \sum_{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{\binom{2k}k}{k2^k}\equiv-\frac12H_{{(p-1)}/2}+\frac7{16}p^2B_{p-3}\pmod{p^3}, \end{align*} $$

where $H_n$ is the nth harmonic number and $B_n$ is the nth Bernoulli number. In addition, we evaluate $\sum _{k=0}^{p-1}(ak+b)\binom {2k}k/2^k$ modulo $p^3$ for any p-adic integers $a, b$.

In this paper, we mainly prove the following conjectures of Sun [16]: Let p > 3 be a prime. Then

\begin{align*}&A_{2p}\equiv A_2-\frac{1648}3p^3B_{p-3}\ ({\rm{mod}}\ p^4),\\&A_{2p-1}\equiv A_1+\frac{16p^3}3B_{p-3}\ ({\rm{mod}}\ p^4),\\&A_{3p}\equiv A_3-36738p^3B_{p-3}\ ({\rm{mod}}\ p^4),\end{align*}

where $A_n=\sum_{k=0}^n\binom{n}k^2\binom{n+k}{k}^2$ is the nth Apéry number, and Bn is the nth Bernoulli number.

The Thue–Morse sequence $\{t(n)\}_{n\geqslant 0}$ is the indicator function of the parity of the number of ones in the binary expansion of nonnegative integers n, where $t(n)=1$ (resp. $=0$) if the binary expansion of n has an odd (resp. even) number of ones. In this paper, we generalize a recent result of E. Miyanohara by showing that, for a fixed Pisot or Salem number $\beta>\sqrt {\varphi }=1.272019\ldots $, the set of the numbers

$$\begin{align*}1,\quad \sum_{n\geqslant1}\frac{t(n)}{\beta^{n}},\quad \sum_{n\geqslant1}\frac{t(n^2)}{\beta^{n}},\quad \dots, \quad \sum_{n\geqslant1}\frac{t(n^k)}{\beta^{n}},\quad \dots \end{align*}$$

$\mathbb {Q}(\beta )$

$\varphi :=(1+\sqrt {5})/2$

$k\geqslant 1$

$a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_k\in \mathbb {Q}(\beta )$

$a_1t(n)+a_2t(n^2)+\cdots +a_kt(n^k)\}_{n\geqslant 1}$