Prescribing the binary digits of squarefree numbers and quadratic residues

We improve upon a result of Steinerberger (2024) by demonstrating that for any fixed $k \in \mathbb{N}$ and sufficiently large $n$, there exist integers $1 \leq a_1, \dots, a_k \leq n$ satisfying: \begin{align*} 0 < \left\| \sum_{j=1}^{k} \sqrt{a_j} \right\| = O(n^{-k/2}). \end{align*} The exponent $k/2$ improves upon the previous exponent of $c k^{1/3}$ of Steinerberger (2024), where $c>0$ is an absolute constant. We also show that for $\alpha \in \mathbb{R}$, there exist in...

We consider the possible sizes of large sumfree sets contained in the discrete hypercube $\{1,...,n\}^k$, and we determine upper and lower bounds for the maximal size as $n$ becomes large. We also discuss a continuous analogue in which our lower bound remains valid and our upper bound can be strengthened, and we consider the generalization of both problems to $l$-fold-sumfree sets.

The distribution of $\alpha p$ modulo one, where $p$ runs over the rational primes and $\alpha$ is a fixed irrational real, has received a lot of attention. It is natural to ask for which exponents $\nu>0$ one can establish the infinitude of primes $p$ satisfying $||\alpha p||\le p^{-\nu}$. The latest record in this regard is Kaisa Matom\"aki's landmark result $\nu=1/3-\varepsilon$ which presents the limit of currently known technology. Recently, Glyn Harman, and, jointly, Ma...

For every positive integer h, the representation function of order h associated to a subset A of the integers or, more generally, of any group or semigroup X, counts the number of ways an element of X can be written as the sum (or product, if X is nonabelian) of h not necessarily distinct elements of X. The direct problem for representation functions in additive number theory begins with a subset A of X and seeks to understand its representation functions. The inverse problem...

A set ${\cal A} \subseteq \Set{1,...,N}$ is of type $B_2$ if all sums $a+b$, with $a\ge b$, $a,b\in {\cal A}$, are distinct. It is well known that the largest such set is of size asymptotic to $N^{1/2}$. For a $B_2$ set ${\cal A}$ of this size we show that, under mild assumptions on the size of the modulus $m$ and on the difference $N^{1/2}-\Abs{{\cal A}}$ (these quantities should not be too large) the elements of ${\cal A}$ are uniformly distributed in the residue classes mo...

Let $n\ge 2$ be an integer and let $\mathbb F_q$ be the finite field with $q$ elements, where $q$ is a prime power. Given $\mathbb F_q$-affine hyperplanes $\mathcal A_1, \ldots, \mathcal A_n$ of $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ in general position, we study the existence and distribution of primitive elements of $\mathbb F_{q^n}$, avoiding each $\mathcal A_i$. We obtain both asymptotic and concrete results, relating to past works on digits over finite fields.

We consider a modification of the classical number theoretic question about the gaps between consecutive primitive roots modulo a prime $p$, which by the well-known result of Burgess are known to be at most $p^{1/4+o(1)}$. Here we measure the distance in the Hamming metric and show that if $p$ is a sufficiently large $r$-bit prime, then for any integer $n \in [1,p]$ one can obtain a primitive root modulo $p$ by changing at most $0.11002786...r$ binary digits of $n$. This is s...

In this paper we start to investigate a new body of questions in additive combinatorics. The fundamental Cauchy--Davenport theorem gives a lower bound on the size of a sumset A+B for subsets of the cyclic group Zp of order p (p prime), and this is just one example of a large family of results. Our aim in this paper is to investigate what happens if we restrict the number of elements of one set that we may use to form the sums. Here is the question we set out to answer: given ...

We make many new observations on primitive roots modulo primes. For an odd prime $p$ and an integer $c$, we establish a theorem concerning $\sum_g(\frac{g+c}p)$, where $g$ runs over all the primitive roots modulo $p$ among $1,\ldots,p-1$, and $(\frac{\cdot}p)$ denotes the Legendre symbol. On the basis of our numerical computations, we formulate 35 conjectures involving primitive roots modulo primes. For example, we conjecture that for any prime $p$ there is a primitive root $...

We use the spectral theory of Hilbert-Maass forms for real quadratic fields to obtain the asymptotics of some sums involving the number of representations as a sum of two squares in the ring of integers.