On Zaremba's Conjecture

It is a striking and elegant fact (proved independently by Furstenberg and Sarkozy) that in any subset of the natural numbers of positive upper density there necessarily exist two distinct elements whose difference is given by a perfect square. In this article we present a new and simple proof of this result by adapting an argument originally developed by Croot and Sisask to give a new proof of Roth's theorem.

We initiate the study of the sets $H(c)$, $0<c<1$, of real $x$ for which the sequence $(kx)_{k\geq1}$ (viewed mod 1) consistently hits the interval $[0,c)$ at least as often as expected (i. e., with frequency $\geq c$). More formally, \[ H(c)=\{\alpha\in \mathbf R\mid {\rm card}(\{1\leq k\leq n\mid < k\alpha><c\})\geq cn, {for all}n\geq1\}. \] where $<x>=x-[x]$ stands for the fractional part of $x\in \mathbb R$. We prove that, for rational $c$, the sets $H(c)$ are of positi...

An upper quasi-density on $\bf H$ (the integers or the non-negative integers) is a real-valued subadditive function $\mu^\ast$ defined on the whole power set of $\mathbf H$ such that $\mu^\ast(X) \le \mu^\ast({\bf H}) = 1$ and $\mu^\ast(k \cdot X + h) = \frac{1}{k}\, \mu^\ast(X)$ for all $X \subseteq \bf H$, $k \in {\bf N}^+$, and $h \in \bf N$, where $k \cdot X := \{kx: x \in X\}$; and an upper density on $\bf H$ is an upper quasi-density on $\bf H$ that is non-decreasing wi...

In this paper we obtain a sharp upper bound for the number of solutions to a certain diophantine inequality involving fractions with power denominator. This problem is motivated by a conjecture of Zhao concerning the spacing of such fractions in short intervals and the large sieve for power modulus. As applications of our estimate we show Zhao's conjecture is true except for a set of small measure and give a new $\ell_1 \rightarrow \ell_2$ large sieve inequality for power mod...

In this paper we show that the natural density $\mathcal{D}[(U_m)]$ of Ulam numbers $(U_m)$ satisfies $\mathcal{D}[(U_m)]=0$. That is, we show that for $(U_m)\subset [1,k]$ then \begin{align}\lim \limits_{k\longrightarrow \infty}\frac{\left |(U_m)\cap [1,k]\right |}{k}=0.\nonumber \end{align}

The problem of looking for subsets of the natural numbers which contain no 3-term arithmetic progressions has a rich history. Roth's theorem famously shows that any such subset cannot have positive upper density. In contrast, Rankin in 1960 suggested looking at subsets without three-term geometric progressions, and constructed such a subset with density about 0.719. More recently, several authors have found upper bounds for the upper density of such sets. We significantly imp...

An Egyptian fraction is a sum of distinct unit fractions (reciprocals of positive integers). We show that every rational number has Egyptian fraction representations where the number of terms is of the same order of magnitude as the largest denominator, improving a result from an earlier paper to best-possible form. We also settle, in best-possible form, the related problem of how small M_t(r) can be such that there is an Egyptian fraction representation of r with exactly t t...

We establish an equidistribution result for push-forwards of certain locally finite algebraic measures in the adelic extension of the space of lattices in the plane. As an application of our analysis we obtain new results regarding the asymptotic normality of the continued fraction expansions of most rationals with a high denominator as well as an estimate on the length of their continued fraction expansions. By similar methods we also establish a complementary result to Zare...

We give an integrability condition on a function $\psi$ guaranteeing that for almost all (or almost no) $x\in\mathbb{R}$, the system $|qx-p|\leq \psi(t)$, $|q|<t$ is solvable in $p\in \mathbb{Z}$, $q\in \mathbb{Z}\smallsetminus \{0\}$ for sufficiently large $t$. Along the way, we characterize such $x$ in terms of the growth of their continued fraction entries, and we establish that Dirichlet's Approximation Theorem is sharp in a very strong sense. Higher-dimensional generaliz...

In this paper we study asymptotic density of rational sets in free abelian group $\mathbb{Z}^n$ of rank $n$. We show that any rational set $R$ in $\mathbb{Z}^n$ has asymptotic density. If $R$ is given by its semi-simple decomposition we show how to compute its asymptotic density.