On some congruences of certain binomial sums

For any prime \(p>3,\) we prove that

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{k=0}^{p-1}\frac{3k+1}{(-8)^k}{2k\atopwithdelims ()k}^3\equiv p\left( \frac{-1}{p}\right) +p^3E_{p-3}\pmod {p^4}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(E_{0},E_{1},E_{2},\ldots \) are Euler numbers and \(\left( \frac{\cdot }{p}\right) \) is the Legendre symbol. This result confirms a conjecture of Z.-W. Sun. We also re-prove that for any odd prime \(p,\)

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{k=0}^{\frac{p-1}{2}}\frac{6k+1}{(-512)^k}{2k\atopwithdelims ()k}^3\equiv p\left( \frac{-2}{p}\right) \pmod {p^2} \end{aligned}$$

using WZ method.

     

Sharp Inequalities Involving $$(n!)^{1/n}$$

We prove that, for all integers \(n\ge 1\),

$$\begin{aligned} \Big (\sqrt{2\pi n}\Big )^{\frac{1}{n(n+1)}}\left( 1-\frac{1}{n+a}\right) <\frac{\root n \of {n!}}{\root n+1 \of {(n+1)!}}\le \Big (\sqrt{2\pi n}\Big )^{\frac{1}{n(n+1)}}\left( 1-\frac{1}{n+b}\right) \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} \big (\sqrt{2\pi n}\big )^{1/n}\left( 1-\frac{1}{2n+\alpha }\right) <\left( 1+\frac{1}{n}\right) ^{n}\frac{\root n \of {n!}}{n}\le \big (\sqrt{2\pi n}\big )^{1/n}\left( 1-\frac{1}{2n+\beta }\right) , \end{aligned}$$

with the best possible constants

$$\begin{aligned}&a=\frac{1}{2},\quad b=\frac{1}{2^{3/4}\pi ^{1/4}-1}=0.807\ldots ,\quad \alpha =\frac{13}{6} \\&\text {and}\quad \beta =\frac{2\sqrt{2}-\sqrt{\pi }}{\sqrt{\pi }-\sqrt{2}}=2.947\ldots . \end{aligned}$$

     

On sums of binomial coefficients involving Catalan and Delannoy numbers modulo $$p^2$$

In this paper, we prove some congruences conjectured by Z.-W. Sun: For any prime \(p>3\), we determine

$$\begin{aligned} \sum \limits _{k = 0}^{p - 1} {\frac{{{C_k}C_k^{(2)}}}{{{{27}^k}}}} \quad {\text { and }}\quad \sum \limits _{k = 1}^{p - 1} {\frac{{\left( {\begin{array}{l} {2k} \\ {k - 1} \\ \end{array}} \right) \left( { \begin{array}{l} {3k} \\ {k - 1} \\ \end{array} } \right) }}{{{{27}^k}}}} \end{aligned}$$

modulo \(p^2\), where \(C_k=\frac{1}{k+1}\left( {\begin{array}{c}2k\\ k\end{array}}\right) \) is the k-th Catalan number and \(C_k^{(2)}=\frac{1}{2k+1}\left( {\begin{array}{c}3k\\ k\end{array}}\right) \) is the second-order Catalan numbers of the first kind. And we prove that

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{D_k}{k}\equiv -q_p(2)+pq_p(2)^2\pmod {p^2}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(D_n=\sum _{k=0}^{n}\left( {\begin{array}{c}n\\ k\end{array}}\right) \left( {\begin{array}{c}n+k\\ k\end{array}}\right) \) is the n-th Delannoy number and \(q_p(2)=(2^{{p-1}}-1)/p\) is the Fermat quotient.

     

Congruences involving $$g_n(x)=\sum \limits _{k=0}^n\left( {\begin{array}{c}n\\ k\end{array}}\right) ^2\left( {\begin{array}{c}2k\\ k\end{array}}\right) x^k$$

Define \(g_n(x)=\sum _{k=0}^n\left( {\begin{array}{c}n\\ k\end{array}}\right) ^2\left( {\begin{array}{c}2k\\ k\end{array}}\right) x^k\) for \(n=0,1,2,\ldots \). Those numbers \(g_n=g_n(1)\) are closely related to Apéry numbers and Franel numbers. In this paper we establish some fundamental congruences involving \(g_n(x)\). For example, for any prime \(p>5\) we have

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{g_k(-1)}{k}\equiv 0\pmod {p^2}\quad \text {and}\quad \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{g_k(-1)}{k^2}\equiv 0\pmod p. \end{aligned}$$

This is similar to Wolstenholme’s classical congruences

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{1}{k}\equiv 0\pmod {p^2}\quad \text {and}\quad \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{1}{k^2}\equiv 0\pmod p \end{aligned}$$

for any prime \(p>3\).

     

Congruences for 5-regular partitions modulo powers of 5

Let \(b_{5}(n)\) denote the number of 5-regular partitions of n. We find the generating functions of \(b_{5}(An+B)\) for some special pairs of integers (A, B). Moreover, we obtain infinite families of congruences for \(b_{5}(n)\) modulo powers of 5. For example, for any integers \(k\ge 1\) and \(n\ge 0\), we prove that

$$\begin{aligned} b_{5}\left( 5^{2k-1}n+\frac{5^{2k}-1}{6}\right) \equiv 0 \quad (\mathrm{mod}\, 5^{k}) \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} b_{5}\left( 5^{2k}n+\frac{5^{2k}-1}{6}\right) \equiv 0 \quad (\mathrm{mod}\, 5^{k}). \end{aligned}$$

     

Fractional sums and Euler-like identities

We introduce a natural definition for sums of the form

$\sum_{\nu=1}^xf(\nu)$

when the number of terms x is a rather arbitrary real or even complex number. The resulting theory includes the known interpolation of the factorial by the Γ function or Euler’s little-known formula \(\sum_{\nu=1}^{-1/2}\frac{1}{\nu}=-2\ln 2\).

Many classical identities like the geometric series and the binomial theorem nicely extend to this more general setting. Sums with a fractional number of terms are closely related to special functions, in particular the Riemann and Hurwitz ζ functions. A number of results about fractional sums can be interpreted as classical infinite sums or products or as limits, including identities like

$\begin{array}{l}\displaystyle\lim_{n\to\infty}\Biggl[e^{\frac{n}{4}(4n+1)}n^{-\frac{1}{8}-n(n+1)}(2\pi)^{-\frac{n}{2}}\prod_{k=1}^{2n}\Gamma\biggl(1+\frac{k}{2}\biggr)^{k(-1)^k}\Biggr]\\[12pt]\quad =\displaystyle\sqrt[12]{2}\exp\biggl(\frac{5}{24}-\frac{3}{2}\zeta'(-1)-\frac{7\zeta(3)}{16\pi^2}\biggr),\end{array}$

some of which seem to be new; and even for those which are known, our approach provides a new method to derive these identities and many others.

     

Scaling Limits for Mixed Kernels

Let \(\mu \) and \(\nu \) be measures supported on \(\left( -1,1\right) \) with corresponding orthonormal polynomials \(\left\{ p_{n}^{\mu }\right\} \) and \( \left\{ p_{n}^{\nu }\right\} \), respectively. Define the mixed kernel

$$\begin{aligned} K_{n}^{{\mu },\nu }\left( x,y\right) =\sum _{j=0}^{n-1}p_{j}^{\mu }\left( x\right) p_{j}^{\nu }\left( y\right) . \end{aligned}$$

We establish scaling limits such as

$$\begin{aligned}&\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }\frac{\pi \sqrt{1-\xi ^{2}}\sqrt{\mu ^{\prime }\left( \xi \right) \nu ^{\prime }\left( \xi \right) }}{n}K_{n}^{\mu ,\nu }\left( \xi +\frac{a\pi \sqrt{1-\xi ^{2}}}{n},\xi +\frac{b\pi \sqrt{1-\xi ^{2}}}{n}\right) \\&\quad =S\left( \frac{\pi \left( a-b\right) }{2}\right) \cos \left( \frac{\pi \left( a-b\right) }{2}+B\left( \xi \right) \right) , \end{aligned}$$

where \(S\left( t\right) =\frac{\sin t}{t}\) is the sinc kernel, and \(B\left( \xi \right) \) depends on \({\mu },\nu \) and \(\xi \). This reduces to the classical universality limit in the bulk when \(\mu =\nu \). We deduce applications to the zero distribution of \(K_{n}^{{\mu },\nu }\), and asymptotics for its derivatives.

     

Congruences for 7 and 49-regular partitions modulo powers of 7

Let \(b_{k}(n)\) denote the number of k-regular partitions of n. In this paper, we prove Ramanujan-type congruences modulo powers of 7 for \(b_{7}(n)\) and \(b_{49}(n)\). For example, for all \(j\ge 1\) and \(n\ge 0\), we prove that

$$\begin{aligned} b_{7}\Bigg (7^{2j-1}n+\frac{3\cdot 7^{2j-1}-1}{4}\Bigg )\equiv 0\pmod {7^{j}} \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} b_{49}\Big (7^{j}n+7^{j}-2\Big )\equiv 0\pmod {7^{j}}. \end{aligned}$$

     

Uniform Bounds on the Relative Error in the Approximation of Upper Quantiles for Sums of Arbitrary Independent Random Variables

Fix any \(n\ge 1\). Let \(\tilde{X}_1,\ldots ,\tilde{X}_n\) be independent random variables. For each \(1\le j \le n\), \(\tilde{X}_j\) is transformed in a canonical manner into a random variable \(X_j\). The \(X_j\) inherit independence from the \(\tilde{X}_j\). Let \(s_y\) and \(s_y^*\) denote the upper \(\frac{1}{y}{\underline{\text{ th }}}\) quantile of \(S_n=\sum _{j=1}^nX_j\) and \(S^*_n=\sup _{1\le k\le n}S_k\), respectively. We construct a computable quantity \(\underline{Q}_y\) based on the marginal distributions of \(X_1,\ldots ,X_n\) to produce upper and lower bounds for \(s_y\) and \(s_y^*\). We prove that for \(y\ge 8\)

$$\begin{aligned} 6^{-1} \gamma _{3y/16}\underline{Q}_{3y/16}\le s^*_{y}\le \underline{Q}_y \end{aligned}$$

where

$$\begin{aligned} \gamma _y=\frac{1}{2w_y+1} \end{aligned}$$

and \(w_y\) is the unique solution of

$$\begin{aligned} \Big (\frac{w_y}{e\ln (\frac{y}{y-2})}\Big )^{w_y}=2y-4 \end{aligned}$$

for \(w_y>\ln (\frac{y}{y-2})\), and for \(y\ge 37\)

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{9}\gamma _{u(y)}\underline{Q}_{u(y)}<s_y \le \underline{Q}_y \end{aligned}$$

where

$$\begin{aligned} u(y)=\frac{3y}{32} \left( 1+\sqrt{1-\frac{64}{3y}}\right) . \end{aligned}$$

The distribution of \(S_n\) is approximately centered around zero in that \(P(S_n\ge 0) \ge \frac{1}{18}\) and \(P(S_n\le 0)\ge \frac{1}{65}\). The results extend to \(n=\infty \) if and only if for some (hence all) \(a>0\)

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{j=1}^{\infty }E\{(\tilde{X}_j-m_j)^2\wedge a^2\}<\infty . \end{aligned}$$

(1)

     

On $$\ell $$-regular bipartitions modulo $$\ell $$

Let \(B_\ell (n)\) denote the number of \(\ell \)-regular bipartitions of n. In this paper, we prove several infinite families of congruences satisfied by \(B_\ell (n)\) for \(\ell \in {\{5,7,13\}}\). For example, we show that for all \(\alpha >0\) and \(n\ge 0\),

$$\begin{aligned} B_5\left( 4^\alpha n+\frac{5\times 4^\alpha -2}{6}\right)\equiv & {} 0 \ (\text {mod}\ 5),\\ B_7\left( 5^{8\alpha }n+\displaystyle \frac{5^{8\alpha }-1}{2}\right)\equiv & {} 3^\alpha B_7(n)\ (\text {mod}\ 7) \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} B_{13}\left( 5^{12\alpha }n+5^{12\alpha }-1\right) \equiv B_{13}(n)\ (\text {mod}\ 13). \end{aligned}$$

     

The Cauchy–Kowalewski Theorem in the Space of Pseudo Q-holomorphic Functions

In this work, we prove the Cauchy–Kowalewski theorem for the initial-value problem

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{\partial w}{\partial t}= & {} Lw \\ w(0,z)= & {} w_{0}(z) \end{aligned}$$

where

$$\begin{aligned} Lw:= & {} E_{0}(t,z)\frac{\partial }{\partial \overline{\phi }}\left( \frac{ d_{E}w}{dz}\right) +F_{0}(t,z)\overline{\left( \frac{\partial }{\partial \overline{\phi }}\left( \frac{d_{E}w}{dz}\right) \right) }+C_{0}(t,z)\frac{ d_{E}w}{dz} \\&+G_{0}(t,z)\overline{\left( \frac{d_{E}w}{dz}\right) } +A_{0}(t,z)w+B_{0}(t,z)\overline{w}+D_{0}(t,z) \end{aligned}$$

in the space \(P_{D}\left( E\right) \) of Pseudo Q-holomorphic functions.

     

Sharp Moser–Trudinger Inequalities on Hyperbolic Spaces with Exact Growth Condition

Let \(\Phi _{n}(x)=e^x-\sum _{j=0}^{n-2}\frac{x^j}{j!}\) and \(\alpha _{n} =n\omega _{n-1}^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\) be the sharp constant in Moser’s inequality (where \(\omega _{n-1}\) is the area of the surface of the unit \(n\)-ball in \(\mathbb {R}^n\)), and \(dV\) be the volume element on the \(n\)-dimensional hyperbolic space \((\mathbb {H}^n, g)\) (\(n\ge {2}\)). In this paper, we establish the following sharp Moser–Trudinger type inequalities with the exact growth condition on \(\mathbb {H}^n\):

For any \(u\in {W^{1,n}(\mathbb {H}^n)}\) satisfying \(\Vert \nabla _{g}u\Vert _{n}\le {1}\), there exists a constant \(C(n)>0\) such that

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\mathbb {H}^n}\frac{\Phi _{n}(\alpha _{n}|u|^{\frac{n}{n-1}})}{(1+|u|)^{\frac{n}{n-1}}}dV \le {C(n)\Vert u\Vert _{L^n}^{n}}. \end{aligned}$$

The power \(\frac{n}{n-1}\) and the constant \(\alpha _{n}\) are optimal in the following senses:

1. (i)
   If the power \(\frac{n}{n-1}\) in the denominator is replaced by any \(p<\frac{n}{n-1}\), then there exists a sequence of functions \(\{u_{k}\}\) such that \(\Vert \nabla _{g}u_{k}\Vert _{n}\le {1}\), but

   $$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{\Vert u_{k}\Vert _{L^n}^{n}}\int _{\mathbb {H}^n} \frac{\Phi _{n}(\alpha _{n}(|u_{k}|)^{\frac{n}{n-1}})}{(1+|u_{k}|)^{p}}dV \rightarrow {\infty }. \end{aligned}$$
    
2. (ii)
   If \(\alpha >\alpha _{n}\), then there exists a sequence of function \(\{u_{k}\}\) such that \(\Vert \nabla _{g}u_{k}\Vert _{n}\le {1}\), but

   $$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{\Vert u_{k}\Vert _{L^n}^{n}}\int _{\mathbb {H}^n} \frac{\Phi _{n}(\alpha (|u_{k}|)^{\frac{n}{n-1}})}{(1+|u_{k}|)^{p}}dV\rightarrow {\infty }, \end{aligned}$$

   for any \(p\ge {0}\).
    

This result sharpens the earlier work of the authors Lu and Tang (Adv Nonlinear Stud 13(4):1035–1052, 2013) on best constants for the Moser–Trudinger inequalities on hyperbolic spaces.

     

On 3-regular partitions with odd parts distinct

We consider \(\text {pod}_3(n)\), the number of 3-regular partitions with odd parts distinct, whose generating function is

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{n\ge 0}\text {pod}_3(n)q^n=\frac{(-q;q^2)_\infty (q^6;q^6)_\infty }{(q^2;q^2)_\infty (-q^3;q^3)_\infty }=\frac{\psi (-q^3)}{\psi (-q)}, \end{aligned}$$

where

$$\begin{aligned} \psi (q)=\sum _{n\ge 0}q^{(n^2+n)/2}=\sum _{-\infty }^\infty q^{2n^2+n}. \end{aligned}$$

For each \(\alpha >0\), we obtain the generating function for

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{n\ge 0}\text {pod}_3\left( 3^{\alpha }n+\delta _\alpha \right) q^n, \end{aligned}$$

where \(4\delta _\alpha \equiv {-1}\pmod {3^{\alpha }}\) if \(\alpha \) is even, \(4\delta _\alpha \equiv {-1}\pmod {3^{\alpha +1}}\) if \(\alpha \) is odd.

We show that the sequence {\(\text {pod}_3(n)\)} satisfies the internal congruences

$$\begin{aligned} \text {pod}_3(9n+2)\equiv \text {pod}_3(n)\pmod 9, \end{aligned}$$

(0.1)

$$\begin{aligned} \text {pod}_3(27n+20)\equiv \text {pod}_3(3n+2)\pmod {27} \end{aligned}$$

(0.2)

and

$$\begin{aligned} \text {pod}_3(243n+182)\equiv \text {pod}_3(27n+20)\pmod {81}. \end{aligned}$$

(0.3)

     

Congruences for (3,11)-regular bipartitions modulo 11

In this note we investigate the function \(B_{k,\ell }(n)\), which counts the number of \((k,\ell )\)-regular bipartitions of n. We shall prove an infinite family of congruences modulo 11: for \(\alpha \ge 2\) and \(n\ge 0\),

$$\begin{aligned} B_{3,11}\left( 3^{\alpha }n+\frac{5\cdot 3^{\alpha -1}-1}{2}\right) \equiv 0\ (\mathrm{mod\ }11). \end{aligned}$$

     

On a Hardy operator inequality

The famous Hardy inequality asserts that if f is a non-negative p-integrable \((p>1)\) function on \((0,\infty )\), then

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{0}^{\infty }\left( \frac{1}{x}\int _{0}^{x}f(t)dt\right) ^pdx\le \left( \frac{p}{p-1}\right) ^p\int _{0}^{\infty }f(x)^pdx. \end{aligned}$$

We present an external form of the Hardy inequality for Hilbert space operators. Moreover, utilizing the operator log-convex functions, a refinement of the operator Hardy inequality is also given.

     

On the sum of the reciprocals of the differences between consecutive primes

Let \(p_n\) denote the n-th prime number, and let \(d_n=p_{n+1}-p_{n}\). Under the Hardy–Littlewood prime-pair conjecture, we prove

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{n\le X}\frac{\log ^{\alpha }d_n}{d_n}\sim {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \quad \frac{X\log \log \log X}{\log X}~\qquad \quad ~ &{}\alpha =-1,\\ \frac{X}{\log X}\frac{(\log \log X)^{1+\alpha }}{1+\alpha }\qquad &{}\alpha >-1, \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

and establish asymptotic properties for some series of \(d_n\) without the Hardy–Littlewood prime-pair conjecture.

     

Optimal bounds for convergence of expected spectral distributions to the semi-circular law

Let \(\mathbf {X}=(X_{jk})_{j,k=1}^n\) denote a Hermitian random matrix with entries \(X_{jk}\), which are independent for \(1\le j\le k\le n\). We consider the rate of convergence of the empirical spectral distribution function of the matrix \(\mathbf {X}\) to the semi-circular law assuming that \(\mathbf{E}X_{jk}=0\), \(\mathbf{E}X_{jk}^2=1\) and that

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{n\ge 1}\sup _{1\le j,k\le n}\mathbf{E}|X_{jk}|^4=:\mu _4<\infty , \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{1\le j,k\le n}|X_{jk}|\le D_0n^{\frac{1}{4}}. \end{aligned}$$

By means of a recursion argument it is shown that the Kolmogorov distance between the expected spectral distribution of the Wigner matrix \(\mathbf {W}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}\mathbf {X}\) and the semicircular law is of order \(O(n^{-1})\).

     

Sharp Affine and Improved Moser–Trudinger–Adams Type Inequalities on Unbounded Domains in the Spirit of Lions

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, we prove sharp singular affine Moser–Trudinger inequalities on both bounded and unbounded domains in \({\mathbb {R}}^{n}\). In particular, we will prove the following much sharper affine Moser–Trudinger inequality in the spirit of Lions (Rev Mat Iberoamericana 1(2):45–121, 1985) (see our Theorem 1.4): Let \(\alpha _{n}=n\left( \frac{n\pi ^{\frac{n}{2}}}{\Gamma (\frac{n}{2}+1)}\right) ^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\), \(0\le \beta <n\) and \(\tau >0\). Then there exists a constant \(C=C\left( n,\beta \right) >0\) such that for all \(0\le \alpha \le \left( 1-\frac{\beta }{n}\right) \alpha _{n}\) and \(u\in C_{0}^{\infty }\left( {\mathbb {R}}^{n}\right) \setminus \left\{ 0\right\} \) with the affine energy \(~{\mathcal {E}}_{n}\left( u\right) <1\), we have

$$\begin{aligned} {\displaystyle \int \nolimits _{{\mathbb {R}}^{n}}} \frac{\phi _{n,1}\left( \frac{2^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\alpha }{\left( 1+{\mathcal {E}}_{n}\left( u\right) ^{n}\right) ^{\frac{1}{n-1}}}\left| u\right| ^{\frac{n}{n-1}}\right) }{\left| x\right| ^{\beta }}dx\le C\left( n,\beta \right) \frac{\left\| u\right\| _{n}^{n-\beta }}{\left| 1-{\mathcal {E}}_{n}\left( u\right) ^{n}\right| ^{1-\frac{\beta }{n}}}. \end{aligned}$$

Moreover, the constant \(\left( 1-\frac{\beta }{n}\right) \alpha _{n}\) is the best possible in the sense that there is no uniform constant \(C(n, \beta )\) independent of u in the above inequality when \(\alpha >\left( 1-\frac{\beta }{n}\right) \alpha _{n}\). Second, we establish the following improved Adams type inequality in the spirit of Lions (Theorem 1.8): Let \(0\le \beta <2m\) and \(\tau >0\). Then there exists a constant \(C=C\left( m,\beta ,\tau \right) >0\) such that

$$\begin{aligned} \underset{u\in W^{2,m}\left( {\mathbb {R}}^{2m}\right) , \int _{ {\mathbb {R}}^{2m}}\left| \Delta u\right| ^{m}+\tau \left| u\right| ^{m} \le 1}{\sup } {\displaystyle \int \nolimits _{{\mathbb {R}}^{2m}}} \frac{\phi _{2m,2}\left( \frac{2^{\frac{1}{m-1}}\alpha }{\left( 1+\left\| \Delta u\right\| _{m}^{m}\right) ^{\frac{1}{m-1}}}\left| u\right| ^{\frac{m}{m-1}}\right) }{\left| x\right| ^{\beta }}dx\le C\left( m,\beta ,\tau \right) , \end{aligned}$$

for all \(0\le \alpha \le \left( 1-\frac{\beta }{2m}\right) \beta (2m,2)\). When \(\alpha >\left( 1-\frac{\beta }{2m}\right) \beta (2m,2)\), the supremum is infinite. In the above, we use

$$\begin{aligned} \phi _{p,q}(t)=e^{t}- {\displaystyle \sum \limits _{j=0}^{j_{\frac{p}{q}}-2}} \frac{t^{j}}{j!},\,\,\,j_{\frac{p}{q}}=\min \left\{ j\in {\mathbb {N}} :j\ge \frac{p}{q}\right\} \ge \frac{p}{q}. \end{aligned}$$

The main difficulties of proving the above results are that the symmetrization method does not work. Therefore, our main ideas are to develop a rearrangement-free argument in the spirit of Lam and Lu (J Differ Equ 255(3):298–325, 2013; Adv Math 231(6): 3259–3287, 2012), Lam et al. (Nonlinear Anal 95: 77–92, 2014) to establish such theorems. Third, as an application, we will study the existence of weak solutions to the biharmonic equation

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l} \Delta ^{2}u+V(x)u=f(x,u)\text { in }{\mathbb {R}}^{4}\\ u\in H^{2}\left( {\mathbb {R}}^{4}\right) ,~u\ge 0 \end{array} \right. , \end{aligned}$$

where the nonlinearity f has the critical exponential growth.

     

Inequalities for the inverses of the polygamma functions

We provide an elementary proof of the left-hand side of the following inequality and give a new upper bound for it.

$$\begin{aligned} \bigg [\frac{n!}{x-(x^{-1/n}+\alpha )^{-n}}\bigg ]^{\frac{1}{n+1}}&<((-1)^{n-1}\psi ^{(n)})^{-1}(x) \\&<\bigg [\frac{n!}{x-(x^{-1/n}+\beta )^{-n}}\bigg ]^{\frac{1}{n+1}}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\alpha =[(n-1)!]^{-1/n}\) and \(\beta =[n!\zeta (n+1)]^{-1/n}\), which was proved in Batir (J Math Anal Appl 328:452–465, 2007), and we prove the following inequalities for the inverse of the digamma function \(\psi \).

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{\log (1+e^{-x})}<\psi ^{-1}(x)< e^{x}+\frac{1}{2}, \quad x\in \mathbb {R}. \end{aligned}$$

The proofs are based on nice applications of the mean value theorem for differentiation and elementary properties of the polygamma functions.

     

Blow Up Criteria for the Incompressible Nematic Liquid Crystal Flows

In this paper, we investigate blow up criteria for the local smooth solutions to the 3D incompressible nematic liquid crystal flows via the components of the gradient velocity field \(\nabla u\) and the gradient orientation field \(\nabla d\). More precisely, we show that \(0< T_{ \ast}<+\infty\) is the maximal time interval if and only if

$$\begin{aligned} & \int_{0}^{T_{\ast}} \bigl\Vert \Vert \partial_{i}u\Vert _{L_{x_{i}} ^{\gamma}} \bigr\Vert _{L_{x_{j}x_{k}}^{\alpha}}^{\beta}+ \|\nabla d\| _{L^{\infty}}^{\frac{8}{3}}\mathrm{d}t=\infty, \\ &\quad\text{ with } \frac{2}{\alpha}+\frac{2}{\beta}\leq\frac{3\alpha +2}{4\alpha}, \text{ and } 1\leq\gamma\leq\alpha,2< \alpha\leq+\infty, \end{aligned}$$

or

$$\begin{aligned} \int_{0}^{T_{\ast}}\|\partial_{3}u_{3} \|^{\beta}_{L^{\alpha}}+\| \nabla d\|^{\frac{8}{3}}_{L^{\infty}} \mathrm{d}t=\infty,\quad\text{with } \frac{3}{\alpha}+\frac{2}{\beta}\leq \frac{3(\alpha+2)}{4 \alpha}, \text{ and } 2< \alpha\leq\infty, \end{aligned}$$

where \(i,j,k\in\{1,2,3\}\), \(i\neq j\), \(i\neq k\), and \(j\neq k\).