New nonbinary code bounds based on divisibility arguments

For \(q,n,d \in \mathbb {N}\), let \(A_q(n,d)\) be the maximum size of a code \(C \subseteq [q]^n\) with minimum distance at least d. We give a divisibility argument resulting in the new upper bounds \(A_5(8,6) \le 65\), \(A_4(11,8)\le 60\) and \(A_3(16,11) \le 29\). These in turn imply the new upper bounds \(A_5(9,6) \le 325\), \(A_5(10,6) \le 1625\), \(A_5(11,6) \le 8125\) and \(A_4(12,8) \le 240\). Furthermore, we prove that for \(\mu ,q \in \mathbb {N}\), there is a 1–1-correspondence between symmetric \((\mu ,q)\)-nets (which are certain designs) and codes \(C \subseteq [q]^{\mu q}\) of size \(\mu q^2\) with minimum distance at least \(\mu q - \mu \). We derive the new upper bounds \(A_4(9,6) \le 120\) and \(A_4(10,6) \le 480\) from these ‘symmetric net’ codes.     

Continued fractions and irrational rotations

Let \(\alpha \in (0, 1)\) be an irrational number with continued fraction expansion \(\alpha =[0; a_1, a_2, \ldots ]\) and let \(p_n/q_n= [0; a_1, \ldots , a_n]\) be the nth convergent to \(\alpha \). We prove a formula for \(p_nq_k-q_np_k\) \((k<n)\) in terms of a Fibonacci type sequence \(Q_n\) defined in terms of the \(a_n\) and use it to provide an exact formula for \(\{n\alpha \}\) for all n.     

Chains,antichains, and complements in infinite partition lattices

We consider the partition lattice \(\Pi (\lambda )\) on any set of transfinite cardinality \(\lambda \) and properties of \(\Pi (\lambda )\) whose analogues do not hold for finite cardinalities. Assuming AC, we prove: (I) the cardinality of any maximal well-ordered chain is always exactly \(\lambda \); (II) there are maximal chains in \(\Pi (\lambda )\) of cardinality \(> \lambda \); (III) a regular cardinal \(\lambda \) is strongly inaccessible if and only if every maximal chain in \(\Pi (\lambda )\) has size at least \(\lambda \); if \(\lambda \) is a singular cardinal and \(\mu ^{< \kappa } < \lambda \le \mu ^\kappa \) for some cardinals \(\kappa \) and (possibly finite) \(\mu \), then there is a maximal chain of size \(< \lambda \) in \(\Pi (\lambda )\); (IV) every non-trivial maximal antichain in \(\Pi (\lambda )\) has cardinality between \(\lambda \) and \(2^{\lambda }\), and these bounds are realised. Moreover, there are maximal antichains of cardinality \(\max (\lambda , 2^{\kappa })\) for any \(\kappa \le \lambda \); (V) all cardinals of the form \(\lambda ^\kappa \) with \(0 \le \kappa \le \lambda \) occur as the cardinalities of sets of complements to some partition \(\mathcal {P} \in \Pi (\lambda )\), and only these cardinalities appear. Moreover, we give a direct formula for the number of complements to a given partition. Under the GCH, the cardinalities of maximal chains, maximal antichains, and numbers of complements are fully determined, and we provide a complete characterisation.     

Asymptotic diophantine approximation: the multiplicative case

Let \(\alpha \) and \(\beta \) be irrational real numbers and \(0<\varepsilon <1/30\). We prove a precise estimate for the number of positive integers \(q\le Q\) that satisfy \(\Vert q\alpha \Vert \cdot \Vert q\beta \Vert <\varepsilon \). If we choose \(\varepsilon \) as a function of Q, we get asymptotics as Q gets large, provided \(\varepsilon Q\) grows quickly enough in terms of the (multiplicative) Diophantine type of \((\alpha ,\beta )\), e.g., if \((\alpha ,\beta )\) is a counterexample to Littlewood’s conjecture, then we only need that \(\varepsilon Q\) tends to infinity. Our result yields a new upper bound on sums of reciprocals of products of fractional parts and sheds some light on a recent question of Lê and Vaaler.     

Thue’s inequalities and the hypergeometric method

We establish upper bounds for the number of primitive integer solutions to inequalities of the shape \(0<|F(x, y)| \le h\), where \(F(x , y) =(\alpha x + \beta y)^r -(\gamma x + \delta y)^r \in \mathbb {Z}[x ,y]\), \(\alpha \), \(\beta \), \(\gamma \) and \(\delta \) are algebraic constants with \(\alpha \delta -\beta \gamma \ne 0\), and \(r \ge 5\) and h are integers. As an important application, we pay special attention to binomial Thue’s inequalities \(|ax^r - by^r| \le c\). The proofs are based on the hypergeometric method of Thue and Siegel and its refinement by Evertse.     

A remark on divisor-weighted sums

Let \(\{a_n\}\) be a sequence of nonnegative real numbers. Under very mild hypotheses, we obtain upper bounds of the expected order of magnitude for sums of the form \(\sum _{n \le x} a_n \tau _r(n)\), where \(\tau _r(n)\) is the \(r\)-fold divisor function. This sharpens previous estimates of Friedlander and Iwaniec. The proof uses combinatorial ideas of Erd?s and Wolke.     

Upper and lower fast Khintchine spectra in continued fractions

For an irrational number \(x\in [0,1)\), let \(x=[a_1(x), a_2(x),\ldots ]\) be its continued fraction expansion. Let \(\psi : \mathbb {N} \rightarrow \mathbb {N}\) be a function with \(\psi (n)/n\rightarrow \infty \) as \(n\rightarrow \infty \). The (upper, lower) fast Khintchine spectrum for \(\psi \) is defined as the Hausdorff dimension of the set of numbers \(x\in (0,1)\) for which the (upper, lower) limit of \(\frac{1}{\psi (n)}\sum _{j=1}^n\log a_j(x)\) is equal to 1. The fast Khintchine spectrum was determined by Fan, Liao, Wang, and Wu. We calculate the upper and lower fast Khintchine spectra. These three spectra can be different.     

Semidefinite bounds for nonbinary codes based on quadruples

For nonnegative integers q, n, d, let \(A_q(n,d)\) denote the maximum cardinality of a code of length n over an alphabet [q] with q letters and with minimum distance at least d. We consider the following upper bound on \(A_q(n,d)\). For any k, let \(\mathcal{C}_k\) be the collection of codes of cardinality at most k. Then \(A_q(n,d)\) is at most the maximum value of \(\sum _{v\in [q]^n}x(\{v\})\), where x is a function \(\mathcal{C}_4\rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}_+\) such that \(x(\emptyset )=1\) and \(x(C)=\!0\) if C has minimum distance less than d, and such that the \(\mathcal{C}_2\times \mathcal{C}_2\) matrix \((x(C\cup C'))_{C,C'\in \mathcal{C}_2}\) is positive semidefinite. By the symmetry of the problem, we can apply representation theory to reduce the problem to a semidefinite programming problem with order bounded by a polynomial in n. It yields the new upper bounds \(A_4(6,3)\le 176\), \(A_4(7,3)\le 596\), \(A_4(7,4)\le 155\), \(A_5(7,4)\le 489\), and \(A_5(7,5)\le 87\).     

Ramanujan-type congruences for overpartitions modulo 16

Let \(\bar{p}(n)\) denote the number of overpartitions of \(n\). Recently, Fortin–Jacob–Mathieu and Hirschhorn–Sellers independently obtained 2-, 3- and 4-dissections of the generating function for \(\bar{p}(n)\) and derived a number of congruences for \(\bar{p}(n)\) modulo 4, 8 and 64 including \(\bar{p}(8n+7)\equiv 0 \pmod {64}\) for \(n\ge 0\). In this paper, we give a 16-dissection of the generating function for \(\bar{p}(n)\) modulo 16 and show that \(\bar{p}(16n+14)\equiv 0\pmod {16}\) for \(n\ge 0\). Moreover, using the \(2\)-adic expansion of the generating function for \(\bar{p}(n)\) according to Mahlburg, we obtain that \(\bar{p}(\ell ^2n+r\ell )\equiv 0\pmod {16}\), where \(n\ge 0\), \(\ell \equiv -1\pmod {8}\) is an odd prime and \(r\) is a positive integer with \(\ell \not \mid r\). In particular, for \(\ell =7\) and \(n\ge 0\), we get \(\bar{p}(49n+7)\equiv 0\pmod {16}\) and \(\bar{p}(49n+14)\equiv 0\pmod {16}\). We also find four congruence relations: \(\bar{p}(4n)\equiv (-1)^n\bar{p}(n) \pmod {16}\) for \(n\ge 0\), \(\bar{p}(4n)\equiv (-1)^n\bar{p}(n)\pmod {32}\) where \(n\) is not a square of an odd positive integer, \(\bar{p}(4n)\equiv (-1)^n\bar{p}(n)\pmod {64}\) for \(n\not \equiv 1,2,5\pmod {8}\) and \(\bar{p}(4n)\equiv (-1)^n\bar{p}(n)\pmod {128}\) for \(n\equiv 0\pmod {4}\).     

On discrete universality of the Riemann zeta-function with respect to uniformly distributed shifts

The Voronin universality theorem asserts that a wide class of analytic functions can be approximated by shifts \(\zeta (s+i\tau )\), \(\tau \in \mathbb {R}\), of the Riemann zeta-function. In the paper, we obtain a universality theorem on the approximation of analytic functions by discrete shifts \(\zeta (s+ix_kh)\), \(k\in \mathbb {N}\), \(h>0\), where \(\{x_k\}\subset \mathbb {R}\) is such that the sequence \(\{ax_k\}\) with every real \(a\ne 0\) is uniformly distributed modulo 1, \(1\le x_k\le k\) for all \(k\in \mathbb {N}\) and, for \(1\le k\), \(m\le N\), \(k\ne m\), the inequality \(|x_k-x_m| \ge y^{-1}_N\) holds with \(y_N> 0\) satisfying \(y_Nx_N\ll N\).     

Lifting Maps from the Symmetrized Polydisc in Small Dimensions

The spectral unit ball \(\Omega _n\) is the set of all \(n\times n\) matrices M with spectral radius less than 1. Let \(\pi (M) \in \mathbb {C}^n\) stand for the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of a matrix M (up to signs), i.e. the elementary symmetric functions of its eigenvalues. The symmetrized polydisc is \({{\mathbb {G}}}_n:=\pi (\Omega _n)\). When investigating Nevanlinna–Pick problems for maps from the disk to the spectral ball, it is often useful to project the map to the symmetrized polydisc (for instance to obtain continuity results for the Lempert function): if \(\Phi \in {\mathrm {Hol}}(\mathbb {D}, \Omega _n)\), then \(\pi \circ \Phi \in {\mathrm {Hol}}(\mathbb {D}, {{\mathbb {G}}}_n)\). Given a map \(\varphi \in {\mathrm {Hol}}(\mathbb {D}, {{\mathbb {G}}}_n)\), we are looking for necessary and sufficient conditions for this map to “lift through given matrices”, i.e. find \(\Phi \) as above so that \(\pi \circ \Phi = \varphi \) and \(\Phi (\alpha _j) = A_j\), \(1\le j \le N\). A natural necessary condition is \(\varphi (\alpha _j)=\pi (A_j)\), \(1\le j \le N\). When the matrices \(A_j\) are derogatory (i.e. do not admit a cyclic vector) new necessary conditions appear, involving derivatives of \(\varphi \) at the points \(\alpha _j\). We prove that those conditions are necessary and sufficient for a local lifting. We give a formula which performs the global lifting in small dimensions (\(n \le 5\)), and a counter-example to show that the formula fails in dimensions 6 and above.     

Few associative triples,isotopisms and groups

Let Q be a quasigroup. For \(\alpha ,\beta \in S_Q\) let \(Q_{\alpha ,\beta }\) be the principal isotope \(x*y = \alpha (x)\beta (y)\). Put \(\mathbf a(Q)= |\{(x,y,z)\in Q^3;\) \(x(yz)) = (xy)z\}|\) and assume that \(|Q|=n\). Then \(\sum _{\alpha ,\beta }\mathbf a(Q_{\alpha ,\beta })/(n!)^2 = n^2(1+(n-1)^{-1})\), and for every \(\alpha \in S_Q\) there is \(\sum _\beta \mathbf a(Q_{\alpha ,\beta })/n! = n(n-1)^{-1}\sum _x(f_x^2-2f_x+n)\ge n^2\), where \(f_x=|\{y\in Q;\) \( y = \alpha (y)x\}|\). If G is a group and \(\alpha \) is an orthomorphism, then \(\mathbf a(G_{\alpha ,\beta })=n^2\) for every \(\beta \in S_Q\). A detailed case study of \(\mathbf a(G_{\alpha ,\beta })\) is made for the situation when \(G = \mathbb Z_{2d}\), and both \(\alpha \) and \(\beta \) are “natural” near-orthomorphisms. Asymptotically, \(\mathbf a(G_{\alpha ,\beta })>3n\) if G is an abelian group of order n. Computational results: \(\mathbf a(7) = 17\) and \(\mathbf a(8) \le 21\), where \(\mathbf a(n) = \min \{\mathbf a(Q);\) \( |Q|=n\}\). There are also determined minimum values for \(\mathbf a(G_{\alpha ,\beta })\), G a group of order \(\le 8\).     

Hyperinvariant Subspace Problem for Some Classes of Operators

An n-normal operator may be defined as an \(n \times n\) operator matrix with entries that are mutually commuting normal operators and an operator \(T \in \mathcal {B(H)}\) is quasi-nM-hyponormal (for \(n \in \mathbb {N}\)) if it is unitarily equivalent to an \(n \times n\) upper triangular operator matrix \((T_{ij})\) acting on \(\mathcal {K}^{(n)}\), where \(\mathcal {K}\) is a separable complex Hilbert space and the diagonal entries \(T_{jj}\) \((j = 1,2,\ldots , n)\) are M-hyponormal operators in \(\mathcal {B(K)}\). This is an extended notion of n-normal operators. We prove a necessary and sufficient condition for an \(n \times n\) triangular operator matrix to have Bishop’s property \((\beta )\). This leads us to study the hyperinvariant subspace problem for an \(n \times n\) triangular operator matrix.     

Lengths of words in transformation semigroups generated by digraphs

Given a simple digraph D on n vertices (with \(n\ge 2\)), there is a natural construction of a semigroup of transformations \(\langle D\rangle \). For any edge (a, b) of D, let \(a\rightarrow b\) be the idempotent of rank \(n-1\) mapping a to b and fixing all vertices other than a; then, define \(\langle D\rangle \) to be the semigroup generated by \(a \rightarrow b\) for all \((a,b) \in E(D)\). For \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \), let \(\ell (D,\alpha )\) be the minimal length of a word in E(D) expressing \(\alpha \). It is well known that the semigroup \(\mathrm {Sing}_n\) of all transformations of rank at most \(n-1\) is generated by its idempotents of rank \(n-1\). When \(D=K_n\) is the complete undirected graph, Howie and Iwahori, independently, obtained a formula to calculate \(\ell (K_n,\alpha )\), for any \(\alpha \in \langle K_n\rangle = \mathrm {Sing}_n\); however, no analogous non-trivial results are known when \(D \ne K_n\). In this paper, we characterise all simple digraphs D such that either \(\ell (D,\alpha )\) is equal to Howie–Iwahori’s formula for all \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \), or \(\ell (D,\alpha ) = n - \mathrm {fix}(\alpha )\) for all \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \), or \(\ell (D,\alpha ) = n - \mathrm {rk}(\alpha )\) for all \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \). We also obtain bounds for \(\ell (D,\alpha )\) when D is an acyclic digraph or a strong tournament (the latter case corresponds to a smallest generating set of idempotents of rank \(n-1\) of \(\mathrm {Sing}_n\)). We finish the paper with a list of conjectures and open problems.     

Strong extensions for q-summing o perators acting in p-convex Banach function s paces for $$1 \le p \le q$$1≤ p≤ q

Let \(1\le p\le q<\infty \) and let X be a p-convex Banach function space over a \(\sigma \)-finite measure \(\mu \). We combine the structure of the spaces \(L^p(\mu )\) and \(L^q(\xi )\) for constructing the new space \(S_{X_p}^{\,q}(\xi )\), where \(\xi \) is a probability Radon measure on a certain compact set associated to X. We show some of its properties, and the relevant fact that every q-summing operator T defined on X can be continuously (strongly) extended to \(S_{X_p}^{\,q}(\xi )\). Our arguments lead to a mixture of the Pietsch and Maurey-Rosenthal factorization theorems, which provided the known (strong) factorizations for q-summing operators through \(L^q\)-spaces when \(1 \le q \le p\). Thus, our result completes the picture, showing what happens in the complementary case \(1\le p\le q\).     

Regularity for Inhomogeneous Dirichlet Problems of Some Schrödinger Equations on Domains

Let \(n\ge 3, \Omega \) be a bounded, simply connected and semiconvex domain in \({\mathbb {R}}^n\) and \(L_{\Omega }:=-\Delta +V\) a Schrödinger operator on \(L^2 (\Omega )\) with the Dirichlet boundary condition, where \(\Delta \) denotes the Laplace operator and the potential \(0\le V\) belongs to the reverse Hölder class \(RH_{q_0}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) for some \(q_0\in (\max \{n/2,2\},\infty ]\). Assume that the growth function \(\varphi :\,{\mathbb {R}}^n\times [0,\infty ) \rightarrow [0,\infty )\) satisfies that \(\varphi (x,\cdot )\) is an Orlicz function and \(\varphi (\cdot ,t)\in {\mathbb {A}}_{\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) (the class of uniformly Muckenhoupt weights). Let \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) be the Musielak–Orlicz–Hardy space whose elements are restrictions of elements of the Musielak–Orlicz–Hardy space, associated with \(L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n}:=-\Delta +V\) on \({\mathbb {R}}^n\), to \(\Omega \). In this article, the authors show that the operators \(VL^{-1}_\Omega \) and \(\nabla ^2L^{-1}_\Omega \) are bounded from \(L^1(\Omega )\) to weak-\(L^1(\Omega )\), from \(L^p(\Omega )\) to itself, with \(p\in (1,2]\), and also from \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) to the Musielak–Orlicz space \(L^\varphi (\Omega )\) or to \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) itself. As applications, the boundedness of \(\nabla ^2{\mathbb {G}}_D\) on \(L^p(\Omega )\), with \(p\in (1,2]\), and from \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) to \(L^\varphi (\Omega )\) or to \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) itself is obtained, where \({\mathbb {G}}_D\) denotes the Dirichlet Green operator associated with \(L_\Omega \). All these results are new even for the Hardy space \(H^1_{L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\), which is just \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) with \(\varphi (x,t):=t\) for all \(x\in {\mathbb {R}}^n\) and \(t\in [0,\infty )\).     

Associate space with respect to a locally $$\sigma $$-finite measure on a $$\delta $$δ-ring and applications to spaces of integrable functions defined by a vector measure

We show that for a locally \(\sigma \)-finite measure \(\mu \) defined on a \(\delta \)-ring, the associate space theory can be developed as in the \(\sigma \)-finite case, and corresponding properties are obtained. Given a saturated \(\sigma \)-order continuous \(\mu \)-Banach function space E, we prove that its dual space can be identified with the associate space \(E ^\times \) if, and only if, \(E^\times \) has the Fatou property. Applying the theory to the spaces \(L^p (\nu )\) and \(L_w^p (\nu )\), where \(\nu \) is a vector measure defined on a \(\delta \)-ring \(\mathcal {R}\) and \(1 \le p < \infty \), we establish results corresponding to those of the case when the vector measure is defined on a \(\sigma \)-algebra.     

On a Weighted Singular Integral Operator with Shifts and Slowly Oscillating Data

Let \(\alpha ,\beta \) be orientation-preserving diffeomorphism (shifts) of \(\mathbb {R}_+=(0,\infty )\) onto itself with the only fixed points \(0\) and \(\infty \) and \(U_\alpha ,U_\beta \) be the isometric shift operators on \(L^p(\mathbb {R}_+)\) given by \(U_\alpha f=(\alpha ')^{1/p}(f\circ \alpha )\), \(U_\beta f=(\beta ')^{1/p}(f\circ \beta )\), and \(P_2^\pm =(I\pm S_2)/2\) where

$$\begin{aligned} (S_2 f)(t):=\frac{1}{\pi i}\int \limits _0^\infty \left( \frac{t}{\tau }\right) ^{1/2-1/p}\frac{f(\tau )}{\tau -t}\,d\tau , \quad t\in \mathbb {R}_+, \end{aligned}$$

is the weighted Cauchy singular integral operator. We prove that if \(\alpha ',\beta '\) and \(c,d\) are continuous on \(\mathbb {R}_+\) and slowly oscillating at \(0\) and \(\infty \), and

$$\begin{aligned} \limsup _{t\rightarrow s}|c(t)|<1, \quad \limsup _{t\rightarrow s}|d(t)|<1, \quad s\in \{0,\infty \}, \end{aligned}$$

then the operator \((I-cU_\alpha )P_2^++(I-dU_\beta )P_2^-\) is Fredholm on \(L^p(\mathbb {R}_+)\) and its index is equal to zero. Moreover, its regularizers are described.

     

An Erdös–Révész Type Law of the Iterated Logarithm for Order Statistics of a Stationary Gaussian Process

Let \(\{X(t):t\in \mathbb R_+\}\) be a stationary Gaussian process with almost surely (a.s.) continuous sample paths, \(\mathbb E X(t) = 0, \mathbb E X^2(t) = 1\) and correlation function satisfying (i) \(r(t) = 1 - C|t|^{\alpha } + o(|t|^{\alpha })\) as \(t\rightarrow 0\) for some \(0\le \alpha \le 2\) and \(C>0\); (ii) \(\sup _{t\ge s}|r(t)|<1\) for each \(s>0\) and (iii) \(r(t) = O(t^{-\lambda })\) as \(t\rightarrow \infty \) for some \(\lambda >0\). For any \(n\ge 1\), consider n mutually independent copies of X and denote by \(\{X_{r:n}(t):t\ge 0\}\) the rth smallest order statistics process, \(1\le r\le n\). We provide a tractable criterion for assessing whether, for any positive, non-decreasing function \(f, \mathbb P(\mathscr {E}_f)=\mathbb P(X_{r:n}(t) > f(t)\, \text { i.o.})\) equals 0 or 1. Using this criterion we find, for a family of functions \(f_p(t)\) such that \(z_p(t)=\mathbb P(\sup _{s\in [0,1]}X_{r:n}(s)>f_p(t))=O((t\log ^{1-p} t)^{-1})\), that \(\mathbb P(\mathscr {E}_{f_p})= 1_{\{p\ge 0\}}\). Consequently, with \(\xi _p (t) = \sup \{s:0\le s\le t, X_{r:n}(s)\ge f_p(s)\}\), for \(p\ge 0\) we have \(\lim _{t\rightarrow \infty }\xi _p(t)=\infty \) and \(\limsup _{t\rightarrow \infty }(\xi _p(t)-t)=0\) a.s. Complementarily, we prove an Erdös–Révész type law of the iterated logarithm lower bound on \(\xi _p(t)\), namely, that \(\liminf _{t\rightarrow \infty }(\xi _p(t)-t)/h_p(t) = -1\) a.s. for \(p>1\) and \(\liminf _{t\rightarrow \infty }\log (\xi _p(t)/t)/(h_p(t)/t) = -1\) a.s. for \(p\in (0,1]\), where \(h_p(t)=(1/z_p(t))p\log \log t\).