Bergelson and Richter [‘Dynamical generalizations of the prime number theorem and disjointness of additive and multiplicative semigroup actions’, Duke Math. J. 171(15) (2022), 3133–3200] established a new dynamical generalisation of the prime number theorem (PNT) and the PNT for arithmetic progressions. Let $h\ge 1, k\ge 2$. Mirsky [‘Note on an asymptotic formula connected with r-free integers’, Quart. J. Math. Oxford Ser. 18 (1947), 178–182] showed that the numbers n such that $n+l_1,\ldots , n+l_h$ are k-free have a natural density for any given nonnegative integers $l_1,\ldots , l_h$. In this note, we show that the Bergelson–Richter theorem holds for the numbers studied by Mirsky.

In this article, we investigate the multiplicative structure of a shifted multiplicative subgroup and its connections with additive combinatorics and the theory of Diophantine equations. Among many new results, we highlight our main contributions as follows. First, we show that if a nontrivial shift of a multiplicative subgroup G contains a product set $AB$, then $|A||B|$ is essentially bounded by $|G|$, refining a well-known consequence of a classical result by Vinogradov. Second, we provide a sharper upper bound of $M_k(n)$, the largest size of a set such that each pairwise product of its elements is n less than a kth power, refining the recent result of Dixit, Kim, and Murty. One main ingredient in our proof is the first non-trivial upper bound on the maximum size of a generalized Diophantine tuple over a finite field. In addition, we determine the maximum size of an infinite family of generalized Diophantine tuples over finite fields with square order, which is of independent interest. We also make significant progress toward a conjecture of Sárközy on the multiplicative decompositions of shifted multiplicative subgroups. In particular, we prove that for almost all primes p, the set $\{x^2-1: x \in {\mathbb F}_p^*\} \setminus \{0\}$ cannot be decomposed as the product of two sets in ${\mathbb F}_p$ non-trivially.

We investigate the sums $(1/\sqrt {H}) \sum _{X < n \leq X+H} \chi (n)$, where $\chi $ is a fixed non-principal Dirichlet character modulo a prime q, and $0 \leq X \leq q-1$ is uniformly random. Davenport and Erdős, and more recently Lamzouri, proved central limit theorems for these sums provided $H \rightarrow \infty $ and $(\log H)/\log q \rightarrow 0$ as $q \rightarrow \infty $, and Lamzouri conjectured these should hold subject to the much weaker upper bound $H=o(q/\log q)$. We prove this is false for some $\chi $, even when $H = q/\log ^{A}q$ for any fixed $A> 0$. However, we show it is true for ‘almost all’ characters on the range $q^{1-o(1)} \leq H = o(q)$.

Using Pólya’s Fourier expansion, these results may be reformulated as statements about the distribution of certain Fourier series with number theoretic coefficients. Tools used in the proofs include the existence of characters with large partial sums on short initial segments, and moment estimates for trigonometric polynomials with random multiplicative coefficients.

We address a core partition regularity problem in Ramsey theory by proving that every finite coloring of the positive integers contains monochromatic Pythagorean pairs (i.e., $x,y\in {\mathbb N}$ such that $x^2\pm y^2=z^2$ for some $z\in {\mathbb N}$). We also show that partitions generated by level sets of multiplicative functions taking finitely many values always contain Pythagorean triples. Our proofs combine known Gowers uniformity properties of aperiodic multiplicative functions with a novel and rather flexible approach based on concentration estimates of multiplicative functions.

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 prove structural results for measure-preserving systems, called Furstenberg systems, naturally associated with bounded multiplicative functions. We show that for all pretentious multiplicative functions, these systems always have rational discrete spectrum and, as a consequence, zero entropy. We obtain several other refined structural and spectral results, one consequence of which is that the Archimedean characters are the only pretentious multiplicative functions that have Furstenberg systems with trivial rational spectrum, another is that a pretentious multiplicative function has ergodic Furstenberg systems if and only if it pretends to be a Dirichlet character, and a last one is that for any fixed pretentious multiplicative function, all its Furstenberg systems are isomorphic. We also study structural properties of Furstenberg systems of a class of multiplicative functions, introduced by Matomäki, Radziwiłł, and Tao, which lie in the intermediate zone between pretentiousness and strong aperiodicity. In a work of the last two authors and Gomilko, several examples of this class with exotic ergodic behavior were identified, and here we complement this study and discover some new unexpected phenomena. Lastly, we prove that Furstenberg systems of general bounded multiplicative functions have divisible spectrum. When these systems are obtained using logarithmic averages, we show that a trivial rational spectrum implies a strong dilation invariance property, called strong stationarity, but, quite surprisingly, this property fails when the systems are obtained using Cesàro averages.

In this article, we establish a function field analog of Jacobi’s theorem on sums of squares and analyze its moments. Our approach involves employing two distinct techniques to derive the main results concerning asymptotic formulas for the moments. The first technique utilizes Dirichlet series framework to derive asymptotic formulas in the limit of large finite fields, specifically when the characteristic of $\mathbb {F}_q[T]$ becomes large. The second technique involves effectively partitioning the set of polynomials of a fixed degree, providing asymptotic formulas in the limit of large polynomial degree.

We develop a generalisation of the square sieve of Heath-Brown and use it to give an alternate proof of one of the large sieve inequalities in our previous paper [‘A large sieve inequality for characters to quadratic moduli’, Preprint, https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~ccorrigan/preprint6.pdf].

Inspired by the work of Bourgain and Garaev (2013), we provide new bounds for certain weighted bilinear Kloosterman sums in polynomial rings over a finite field. As an application, we build upon and extend some results of Sawin and Shusterman (2022). These results include bounds for exponential sums weighted by the Möbius function and a level of distribution for irreducible polynomials beyond 1/2, with arbitrary composite modulus. Additionally, we can do better when averaging over the modulus, to give an analogue of the Bombieri-Vinogradov Theorem with a level of distribution even further beyond 1/2.

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.

We study a certain class of arithmetic functions that appeared in Klurman’s classification of $\pm 1$ multiplicative functions with bounded partial sums; c.f., Comp. Math. 153(2017), 2017, no. 8, 1622–1657. These functions are periodic and $1$-pretentious. We prove that if $f_1$ and $f_2$ belong to this class, then $\sum _{n\leq x}(f_1\ast f_2)(n)=\Omega (x^{1/4})$. This confirms a conjecture by the first author. As a byproduct of our proof, we studied the correlation between $\Delta (x)$ and $\Delta (\theta x)$, where $\theta $ is a fixed real number. We prove that there is a nontrivial correlation when $\theta $ is rational, and a decorrelation when $\theta $ is irrational. Moreover, if $\theta $ has a finite irrationality measure, then we can make it quantitative this decorrelation in terms of this measure.

We study the exact Hausdorff and packing dimensions of the prime Cantor set, $\Lambda _P$, which comprises the irrationals whose continued fraction entries are prime numbers. We prove that the Hausdorff measure of the prime Cantor set cannot be finite and positive with respect to any sufficiently regular dimension function, thus negatively answering a question of Mauldin and Urbański (1999) and Mauldin (2013) for this class of dimension functions. By contrast, under a reasonable number-theoretic conjecture we prove that the packing measure of the conformal measure on the prime Cantor set is in fact positive and finite with respect to the dimension function $\psi (r) = r^\delta \log ^{-2\delta }\log (1/r)$, where $\delta $ is the dimension (conformal, Hausdorff, and packing) of the prime Cantor set.

Given an integer $k\ge 2$, let $\omega _k(n)$ denote the number of primes that divide n with multiplicity exactly k. We compute the density $e_{k,m}$ of those integers n for which $\omega _k(n)=m$ for every integer $m\ge 0$. We also show that the generating function $\sum _{m=0}^\infty e_{k,m}z^m$ is an entire function that can be written in the form $\prod _{p} \bigl (1+{(p-1)(z-1)}/{p^{k+1}} \bigr )$; from this representation we show how to both numerically calculate the $e_{k,m}$ to high precision and provide an asymptotic upper bound for the $e_{k,m}$. We further show how to generalize these results to all additive functions of the form $\sum _{j=2}^\infty a_j \omega _j(n)$; when $a_j=j-1$ this recovers a classical result of Rényi on the distribution of $\Omega (n)-\omega (n)$.

Let f(x) and g(x) be polynomials in $\mathbb F_{2}[x]$ with ${\rm deg}\text{ } f=n$. It is shown that for $n\gg 1$, there is an $g_{1}(x)\in \mathbb F_{2}[x]$ with ${\rm deg}\text{ } g_{1}\leqslant \max\{{\rm deg}\text{ } g, 6.7\log n\}$ and $g(x)-g_{1}(x)$ having $ \lt 6.7\log n$ terms such that $\gcd(f(x), g_{1}(x))=1$. As an application, it is established using a result of Dubickas and Sha that given $f(x)\in \mathbb F_{2}[x]$ of degree $n\geqslant 1$, there is a separable $g(x)\in 2[x]$ with ${\rm deg}\text{ } g= {\rm deg}\text{ } f$ and satisfying that $f(x)-g(x)$ has $\leqslant 6.7\log n$ terms. As a simple consequence, the latter result holds in $\mathbb Z[x]$ after replacing ‘number of terms’ by the L1-norm of a polynomial and $6.7\log n$ by $6.8\log n$. This improves the bound $(\log n)^{\log 4 +\operatorname{\varepsilon}}$ obtained by Filaseta and Moy.

We introduce a number field analogue of the Mertens conjecture and demonstrate its falsity for all but finitely many number fields of any given degree. We establish the existence of a logarithmic limiting distribution for the analogous Mertens function, expanding upon work of Ng. Finally, we explore properties of the generalised Mertens function of certain dicyclic number fields as consequences of Artin factorisation.

Let $\mathcal {P}$ be the set of primes and $\pi (x)$ the number of primes not exceeding x. Let $P^+(n)$ be the largest prime factor of n, with the convention $P^+(1)=1$, and $ T_c(x)=\#\{p\le x:p\in \mathcal {P},P^+(p-1)\ge p^c\}. $ Motivated by a conjecture of Chen and Chen [‘On the largest prime factor of shifted primes’, Acta Math. Sin. (Engl. Ser.) 33 (2017), 377–382], we show that for any c with $8/9\le c<1$,

$$ \begin{align*} \limsup_{x\rightarrow\infty}T_c(x)/\pi(x)\le 8(1/c-1), \end{align*} $$

which clearly means that

$$ \begin{align*} \limsup_{x\rightarrow\infty}T_c(x)/\pi(x)\rightarrow 0 \quad \text{as } c\rightarrow 1. \end{align*} $$

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].

In this paper, we establish some finiteness results about the multiplicative dependence of rational values modulo sets which are ‘close’ (with respect to the Weil height) to division groups of finitely generated multiplicative groups of a number field K. For example, we show that under some conditions on rational functions $f_1, \ldots, f_n\in K(X)$, there are only finitely many elements $\alpha \in K$ such that $f_1(\alpha),\ldots,f_n(\alpha)$ are multiplicatively dependent modulo such sets.

We show that if F is $\mathbb{Q}$ or a multiquadratic number field, $p\in\left\{{2,3,5}\right\}$, and $K/F$ is a Galois extension of degree a power of p, then for elliptic curves $E/\mathbb{Q}$ ordered by height, the average dimension of the p-Selmer groups of $E/K$ is bounded. In particular, this provides a bound for the average K-rank of elliptic curves $E/\mathbb{Q}$ for such K. Additionally, we give bounds for certain representation–theoretic invariants of Mordell–Weil groups over Galois extensions of such F.

The central result is that: for each finite Galois extension $K/F$ of number fields and prime number p, as $E/\mathbb{Q}$ varies, the difference in dimension between the Galois fixed space in the p-Selmer group of $E/K$ and the p-Selmer group of $E/F$ has bounded average.