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We study density and partition properties of polynomial equations in prime variables. We consider equations of the form $a_1h(x_1) + \cdots + a_sh(x_s)=b$, where the ai and b are fixed coefficients and h is an arbitrary integer polynomial of degree d. We establish that the natural necessary conditions for this equation to have a monochromatic non-constant solution with respect to any finite colouring of the prime numbers are also sufficient when the equation has at least $(1+o(1))d^2$ variables. We similarly characterize when such equations admit solutions over any set of primes with positive relative upper density. In both cases, we obtain lower bounds for the number of monochromatic or dense solutions in primes that are of the correct order of magnitude. Our main new ingredient is a uniform lower bound on the cardinality of a prime polynomial Bohr set.
We prove the Hasse principle for a smooth projective variety $X\subset \mathbb {P}^{n-1}_\mathbb {Q}$ defined by a system of two cubic forms $F,G$ as long as $n\geq 39$. The main tool here is the development of a version of Kloosterman refinement for a smooth system of equations defined over $\mathbb {Q}$.
For $k\geq 2$ and a nonzero integer n, a generalised Diophantine m-tuple with property $D_k(n)$ is a set of m positive integers $S = \{a_1,a_2,\ldots , a_m\}$ such that $a_ia_j + n$ is a kth power for $1\leq i< j\leq m$. Define $M_k(n):= \text {sup}\{|S| : S$ having property $D_k(n)\}$. Dixit et al. [‘Generalised Diophantine m-tuples’, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc.150(4) (2022), 1455–1465] proved that $M_k(n)=O(\log n)$, for a fixed k, as n varies. In this paper, we obtain effective upper bounds on $M_k(n)$. In particular, we show that for $k\geq 2$, $M_k(n) \leq 3\,\phi (k) \log n$ if n is sufficiently large compared to k.
We prove discrete restriction estimates for a broad class of hypersurfaces arising in seminal work of Birch. To do so, we use a variant of Bourgain’s arithmetic version of the Tomas–Stein method and Magyar’s decomposition of the Fourier transform of the indicator function of the integer points on a hypersurface.
We show that if $N_2(n)=1$, then the number $2n-3$ is prime. The average behavior of $N_2(n)$ is studied. We prove that the set $\{n:N_2(n)\le k,\,n\ge 2\}$ has zero natural density.
Let $\varphi _1,\ldots ,\varphi _r\in {\mathbb Z}[z_1,\ldots z_k]$ be integral linear combinations of elementary symmetric polynomials with $\text {deg}(\varphi _j)=k_j\ (1\le j\le r)$, where $1\le k_1<k_2<\cdots <k_r=k$. Subject to the condition $k_1+\cdots +k_r\ge \tfrac {1}{2}k(k-~1)+2$, we show that there is a paucity of nondiagonal solutions to the Diophantine system $\varphi _j({\mathbf x})=\varphi _j({\mathbf y})\ (1\le j\le r)$.
We find all integer solutions to the equation
$x^2+5^a\cdot 13^b\cdot 17^c=y^n$
with
$a,\,b,\,c\geq 0$
,
$n\geq 3$
,
$x,\,y>0$
and
$\gcd (x,\,y)=1$
. Our proof uses a deep result about primitive divisors of Lucas sequences in combination with elementary number theory and computer search.
Let K be an algebraic number field. We investigate the K-rational distance problem and prove that there are infinitely many nonisomorphic cubic number fields and a number field of degree n for every
$n\geq 2$
in which there is a point in the plane of a unit square at K-rational distances from the four vertices of the square.
We show that any smooth projective cubic hypersurface of dimension at least 29 over the rationals contains a rational line. A variation of our methods provides a similar result over p-adic fields. In both cases, we improve on previous results due to the second author and Wooley.
We include an appendix in which we highlight some slight modifications to a recent result of Papanikolopoulos and Siksek. It follows that the set of rational points on smooth projective cubic hypersurfaces of dimension at least 29 is generated via secant and tangent constructions from just a single point.
In this paper we show that a polynomial equation admits infinitely many prime-tuple solutions, assuming only that the equation satisfies suitable local conditions and the polynomial is sufficiently non-degenerate algebraically. Our notion of algebraic non-degeneracy is related to the $h$-invariant introduced by W. M. Schmidt. Our results prove a conjecture by B. Cook and Á. Magyar for hypersurfaces of degree 3.
We prove new upper bounds for the number of representations of an arbitrary rational number as a sum of three unit fractions. In particular, for fixed m there are at most ${\cal O}_{\epsilon }(n^{{3}/{5}+\epsilon })$ solutions of ${m}/{n} = {1}/{a_1} + {1}/{a_2} + {1}/{a_3}$. This improves upon a result of Browning and Elsholtz (2011) and extends a result of Elsholtz and Tao (2013) who proved this when m=4 and n is a prime. Moreover, there exists an algorithm finding all solutions in expected running time ${\cal O}_{\epsilon }(n^{\epsilon }({n^3}/{m^2})^{{1}/{5}})$, for any $\epsilon \gt 0$. We also improve a bound on the maximum number of representations of a rational number as a sum of k unit fractions. Furthermore, we also improve lower bounds. In particular, we prove that for given $m \in {\open N}$ in every reduced residue class e mod f there exist infinitely many primes p such that the number of solutions of the equation ${m}/{p} = {1}/{a_1} + {1}/{a_2} + {1}/{a_3}$ is $\gg _{f,m} \exp (({5\log 2}/({12\,{\rm lcm} (m,f)}) + o_{f,m}(1)) {\log p}/{\log \log p})$. Previously, the best known lower bound of this type was of order $(\log p)^{0.549}$.
We show that Hermite’s theorem fails for every integer $n$ of the form $3^{k_{1}}+3^{k_{2}}+3^{k_{3}}$ with integers $k_{1}>k_{2}>k_{3}\geqslant 0$. This confirms a conjecture of Brassil and Reichstein. We also obtain new results for the relative Hermite–Joubert problem over a finitely generated field of characteristic 0.
We obtain bounds for the number of variables required to establish Hasse principles, both for the existence of solutions and for asymptotic formulæ, for systems of additive equations containing forms of differing degree but also multiple forms of like degree. Apart from the very general estimates of Schmidt and Browning–Heath–Brown, which give weak results when specialized to the diagonal situation, this is the first result on such “hybrid” systems. We also obtain specialized results for systems of quadratic and cubic forms, where we are able to take advantage of some of the stronger methods available in that setting. In particular, we achieve essentially square root cancellation for systems consisting of one cubic and $r$ quadratic equations.
Dufresnoy and Pisot characterized the smallest Pisot number of degree $n\,\ge \,3$ by giving explicitly its minimal polynomial. In this paper, we translate Dufresnoy and Pisot’s result to the Laurent series case. The aim of this paper is to prove that the minimal polynomial of the smallest Pisot element $\left( \text{SPE} \right)$ of degree $n$ in the field of formal power series over a finite field is given by $P\left( Y \right)\,=\,{{Y}^{n}}\,-\,\alpha X{{Y}^{n-1}}\,-{{\alpha }^{n}}$ where $\alpha $ is the least element of the finite field ${{\mathbb{F}}_{q}}\backslash \left\{ 0 \right\}$ (as a finite total ordered set). We prove that the sequence of SPEs of degree $n$ is decreasing and converges to $\alpha X$. Finally, we show how to obtain explicit continued fraction expansion of the smallest Pisot element over a finite field.
We develop Weyl differencing and Hua-type lemmata for a class of multidimensional exponential sums. We then apply our estimates to bound the number of variables required to establish an asymptotic formula for the number of solutions of a system of diophantine equations arising from the study of linear spaces on hypersurfaces. For small values of the degree and dimension, our results are superior to those stemming from the author’s earlier work on Vinogradov’s mean value theorem.
In this paper, we give several pictorial fractal representations of the ample or Kähler cone for surfaces in a certain class of $K3$ surfaces. The class includes surfaces described by smooth (2, 2, 2) forms in ${{\mathbb{P}}^{1}}\,\times \,{{\mathbb{P}}^{1}}\,\times \,{{\mathbb{P}}^{1}}$ defined over a sufficiently large number field $K$ that have a line parallel to one of the axes and have Picard number four. We relate the Hausdorff dimension of this fractal to the asymptotic growth of orbits of curves under the action of the surface's group of automorphisms. We experimentally estimate the Hausdorff dimension of the fractal to be 1.296 ± .010.
We investigate the number of integral solutions possessed by a pair of diagonal cubic equations in a large box. Provided that the number of variables in the system is at least fourteen, and in addition the number of variables in any non-trivial linear combination of the underlying forms is at least eight, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the number of integral solutions consistent with the product of local densities associated with the system.
We show that a system of r quadratic forms over a 𝔭-adic field in at least 4r+1 variables will have a non-trivial zero as soon as the cardinality of the residue field is large enough. In contrast, the Ax–Kochen theorem [J. Ax and S. Kochen, Diophantine problems over local fields. I, Amer. J. Math. 87 (1965), 605–630] requires the characteristic to be large in terms of the degree of the field over ℚp. The proofs use a 𝔭-adic minimization technique, together with counting arguments over the residue class field, based on considerations from algebraic geometry.