On the Newton polygons of twisted L-functions of binomials

Let χ be an order c multiplicative character of a finite field and $f(x)=x^d+\lambda x^e$ a binomial with $(d,e)=1$. We study the twisted classical and T-adic Newton polygons of f. When $p>(d-e)(2d-1)$, we give a lower bound of Newton polygons and show that they coincide if p does not divide a certain integral constant depending on $p\mathrm{mod}cd$.We conjecture that this condition holds if p is large enough with respect to $c,d$ by combining all known results and the conjecture given by Zhang-Niu. As an example, we show that it holds for $e=d-1$.     

Words that almost commute

The Hamming distance $\mathrm{ham}(u,v)$ between two equal-length words u, v is the number of positions where u and v differ. The words u and v are said to be conjugates if there exist non-empty words $x,y$ such that $u=xy$ and $v=yx$. The smallest value $\mathrm{ham}(xy,yx)$ can take on is 0, when x and y commute. But, interestingly, the next smallest value $\mathrm{ham}(xy,yx)$ can take on is 2 and not 1. In this paper, we consider conjugates $u=xy$ and $v=yx$ where $\mathrm{ham}(xy,yx)=2$. More specifically, we provide an efficient formula to count the number $h(n)$ of length-n words $u=xy$ over a k-letter alphabet that have a conjugate $v=yx$ such that $\mathrm{ham}(xy,yx)=2$. We also provide efficient formulae for other quantities closely related to $h(n)$. Finally, we show that $h(n)$ grows erratically: cubically for n prime, but exponentially for n even.     

Erdős matching conjecture for almost perfect matchings

In 1965 Erd?s asked, what is the largest size of a family of k-element subsets of an n-element set that does not contain a matching of size $s+1$? In this note, we improve upon a recent result of Frankl and resolve this problem for $s>101k^3$ and $(s+1)k?n<(s+1)(k+\frac{1}{100k})$.     

The discriminant problem for Artin-Schreier extensions: Explicit results

Given a global function field K of characteristic p, for all effective divisors $\mathfrak{D}$ in the divisor group of K we count the number of cyclic extensions $F\supset K$ of degree p where the relative discriminant ${\mathrm{\text{Disc}}}_K(F)=(p-1)\mathfrak{D}$.