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.

     

A Characterization of Two-Weight Norm Inequality for Littlewood–Paley $$g_{\lambda }^{*}$$-Function

Let \(n\ge 2\) and \(g_{\lambda }^{*}\) be the well-known high-dimensional Littlewood–Paley function which was defined and studied by E. M. Stein,

$$\begin{aligned} g_{\lambda }^{*}(f)(x) =\bigg (\iint _{\mathbb {R}^{n+1}_{+}} \Big (\frac{t}{t+|x-y|}\Big )^{n\lambda } |\nabla P_tf(y,t)|^2 \frac{\mathrm{d}y \mathrm{d}t}{t^{n-1}}\bigg )^{1/2}, \ \quad \lambda > 1, \end{aligned}$$

where \(P_tf(y,t)=p_t*f(y)\), \(p_t(y)=t^{-n}p(y/t)\), and \(p(x) = (1+|x|^2)^{-(n+1)/2}\), \(\nabla =(\frac{\partial }{\partial y_1},\ldots ,\frac{\partial }{\partial y_n},\frac{\partial }{\partial t})\). In this paper, we give a characterization of two-weight norm inequality for \(g_{\lambda }^{*}\)-function. We show that \(\big \Vert g_{\lambda }^{*}(f \sigma ) \big \Vert _{L^2(w)} \lesssim \big \Vert f \big \Vert _{L^2(\sigma )}\) if and only if the two-weight Muckenhoupt \(A_2\) condition holds, and a testing condition holds:

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{Q : \text {cubes}~\mathrm{in} \ {\mathbb {R}^n}} \frac{1}{\sigma (Q)} \int _{{\mathbb {R}^n}} \iint _{\widehat{Q}} \Big (\frac{t}{t+|x-y|}\Big )^{n\lambda }|\nabla P_t(\mathbf {1}_Q \sigma )(y,t)|^2 \frac{w \mathrm{d}x \mathrm{d}t}{t^{n-1}} \mathrm{d}y < \infty , \end{aligned}$$

where \(\widehat{Q}\) is the Carleson box over Q and \((w, \sigma )\) is a pair of weights. We actually prove this characterization for \(g_{\lambda }^{*}\)-function associated with more general fractional Poisson kernel \(p^\alpha (x) = (1+|x|^2)^{-{(n+\alpha )}/{2}}\). Moreover, the corresponding results for intrinsic \(g_{\lambda }^*\)-function are also presented.

     

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)

     

$$L^p$$-Fourier asymptotics,Hardy-type inequality and fractal measures

Suppose \(\mu \) is an \(\alpha \)-dimensional fractal measure for some \(0<\alpha <n\). Inspired by the results proved by Strichartz (J Funct Anal 89:154–187, 1990), we discuss the \(L^p\)-asymptotics of the Fourier transform of \(fd\mu \) by estimating bounds of

$$\begin{aligned} \underset{L\rightarrow \infty }{\liminf }\ \frac{1}{L^k} \int _{|\xi |\le L}\ |\widehat{fd\mu }(\xi )|^pd\xi , \end{aligned}$$

for \(f\in L^p(d\mu )\) and \(2<p<2n/\alpha \). In a different direction, we prove a Hardy type inequality, that is,

$$\begin{aligned} \int \frac{|f(x)|^p}{(\mu (E_x))^{2-p}}d\mu (x)\le C\ \underset{L\rightarrow \infty }{\liminf }\frac{1}{L^{n-\alpha }} \int _{B_L(0)}|\widehat{fd\mu }(\xi )|^pd\xi \end{aligned}$$

where \(1\le p\le 2\) and \(E_x=E\cap (-\infty ,x_1]\times (-\infty ,x_2]\ldots (-\infty ,x_n]\) for \(x=(x_1,\ldots x_n)\in {\mathbb R}^n\) generalizing the one dimensional results by Hudson and Leckband (J Funct Anal 108:133–160, 1992).

     

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 \(p>3\).

     

Jump and Variational Inequalities for Rough Operators

In this paper, we systematically study jump and variational inequalities for rough operators, whose research have been initiated by Jones et al. More precisely, we show some jump and variational inequalities for the families \(\mathcal T:=\{T_\varepsilon \}_{\varepsilon >0}\) of truncated singular integrals and \(\mathcal M:=\{M_t\}_{t>0}\) of averaging operators with rough kernels, which are defined respectively by

$$\begin{aligned} T_\varepsilon f(x)=\int _{|y|>\varepsilon }\frac{\Omega (y')}{|y|^n}f(x-y)dy \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} M_t f(x)=\frac{1}{t^n}\int _{|y|<t}\Omega (y')f(x-y)dy, \end{aligned}$$

where the kernel \(\Omega \) belongs to \(L\log ^+\!\!L(\mathbf S^{n-1})\) or \(H^1(\mathbf S^{n-1})\) or \(\mathcal {G}_\alpha (\mathbf S^{n-1})\) (the condition introduced by Grafakos and Stefanov). Some of our results are sharp in the sense that the underlying assumptions are the best known conditions for the boundedness of corresponding maximal operators.

     

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 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.

     

Large conformal metrics with prescribed sign-changing Gauss curvature

Let \((M,g)\) be a two dimensional compact Riemannian manifold of genus \(g(M)>1\). Let \(f\) be a smooth function on \(M\) such that

$$\begin{aligned} f \ge 0, \quad f\not \equiv 0, \quad \min _M f = 0. \end{aligned}$$

Let \(p_1,\ldots ,p_n\) be any set of points at which \(f(p_i)=0\) and \(D^2f(p_i)\) is non-singular. We prove that for all sufficiently small \(\lambda >0\) there exists a family of “bubbling” conformal metrics \(g_\lambda =e^{u_\lambda }g\) such that their Gauss curvature is given by the sign-changing function \(K_{g_\lambda }=-f+\lambda ^2\). Moreover, the family \(u_\lambda \) satisfies

$$\begin{aligned} u_\lambda (p_j) = -4\log \lambda -2\log \left( \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \log \frac{1}{\lambda }\right) +O(1) \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} \lambda ^2e^{u_\lambda }\rightharpoonup 8\pi \sum _{i=1}^{n}\delta _{p_i},\quad \text{ as } \lambda \rightarrow 0, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\delta _{p}\) designates Dirac mass at the point \(p\).

     

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 \(O(n^{-1})\).

     

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 \(j\neq k\).

     

A remark on exceptional sets in Erdös-Rényi limit theorem

Let \((x_i)_{i=1}^{+\infty }\) be the digits sequence in the unique terminating dyadic expansion of \(x\in [0,1)\). The run-length function \(l_n(x)\) is defined by

$$\begin{aligned} l_n(x):=\max \left\{ j:x_{i+1}=x_{i+2}=\cdots =x_{i+j}=1\ \text {for some}\ 0\le i\le n-j\right\} . \end{aligned}$$

Erdös and Rényi proved that

$$\begin{aligned} \lim _{n\rightarrow +\infty }\frac{l_n(x)}{\log _2{n}}=1, \text {a.e.}\ x\in [0,1). \end{aligned}$$

In this note, we show that for each pair of numbers \(\alpha ,\beta \in [0,+\infty ]\) with \(\alpha \le \beta \), the following exceptional set

$$\begin{aligned} E_{\alpha ,\beta }=\left\{ x\in [0,1):\liminf _{n\rightarrow +\infty }\frac{l_n(x)}{\log _2{n}}=\alpha ,\ \limsup _{n\rightarrow +\infty }\frac{l_n(x)}{\log _2{n}}=\beta \right\} \end{aligned}$$

has Hausdorff dimension one.

     

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.

     

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.

     

Contributions to a conjecture of Mueller and Schmidt on Thue inequalities

Let \(F(X,Y)=\sum \nolimits _{i=0}^sa_iX^{r_i}Y^{r-r_i}\in {\mathbb {Z}}[X,Y]\) be a form of degree \(r=r_s\ge 3\), irreducible over \({\mathbb {Q}}\) and having at most \(s+1\) non-zero coefficients. Mueller and Schmidt showed that the number of solutions of the Thue inequality

$$\begin{aligned} |F(X,Y)|\le h \end{aligned}$$

is \(\ll s^2h^{2/r}(1+\log h^{1/r})\). They conjectured that \(s^2\) may be replaced by s. Let

$$\begin{aligned} \Psi = \max _{0\le i\le s} \max \left( \sum _{w=0}^{i-1} \frac{1}{r_i-r_w},\sum _{w= i+1}^{s}\frac{1}{r_w-r_i}\right) . \end{aligned}$$

Then we show that \(s^2\) may be replaced by \(\max (s\log ^3s, se^{\Psi })\). We also show that if \(|a_0|=|a_s|\) and \(|a_i|\le |a_0|\) for \(1\le i\le s-1\), then \(s^2\) may be replaced by \(s\log ^{3/2}s\). In particular, this is true if \(a_i\in \{-1,1\}\).

     

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

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

     

Zeta functions and asymptotic additive bases with some unusual sets of primes

Fix \(\delta \in (0,1]\), \(\sigma _0\in [0,1)\) and a real-valued function \(\varepsilon (x)\) for which \(\varlimsup _{x\rightarrow \infty }\varepsilon (x)\leqslant 0\). For every set of primes \(\mathcal {P}\) whose counting function \(\pi _\mathcal {P}(x)\) satisfies an estimate of the form

$$\begin{aligned} \pi _\mathcal {P}(x)=\delta \,\pi (x)+O\bigl (x^{\sigma _0+\varepsilon (x)}\bigr ), \end{aligned}$$

we define a zeta function \(\zeta _\mathcal {P}(s)\) that is closely related to the Riemann zeta function \(\zeta (s)\). For \(\sigma _0\leqslant \frac{1}{2}\), we show that the Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the non-vanishing of \(\zeta _\mathcal {P}(s)\) in the region \(\{\sigma >\frac{1}{2}\}\).

For every set of primes \(\mathcal {P}\) that contains the prime 2 and whose counting function satisfies an estimate of the form

$$\begin{aligned} \pi _\mathcal {P}(x)=\delta \,\pi (x)+O\bigl ((\log \log x)^{\varepsilon (x)}\bigr ), \end{aligned}$$

we show that \(\mathcal {P}\) is an exact asymptotic additive basis for \(\mathbb {N}\), i.e. for some integer \(h=h(\mathcal {P})>0\) the sumset \(h\mathcal {P}\) contains all but finitely many natural numbers. For example, an exact asymptotic additive basis for \(\mathbb {N}\) is provided by the set

$$\begin{aligned} \{2,547,1229,1993,2749,3581,4421,5281\ldots \}, \end{aligned}$$

which consists of 2 and every hundredth prime thereafter.

     

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

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

     

How f ar is $${\left( 1 + \fr ac{ a}{n}\right) ^n} $$1+ ann from $$ e^ a $$e a when a is an element of a B an ach algebr a?

We present effective upper and lower bounds for the distance from \(\displaystyle \left( 1 + \frac{a}{n}\right) ^n \) to \(\displaystyle e^a \) for an element a of a complex unital Banach algebra and positive integer n. Specifically

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{2n} \sup \left\{ \left| \mathfrak {R}(z^2) \right| e^{\mathfrak {R}(z)} : z \in \sigma (a) \right\} \lesssim _{(2)} \left\| e^a - \left( 1 + \frac{a}{n}\right) ^n \right\| \le \frac{ \left\| a \right\| ^2}{2n} \ e^{ \left\| a \right\| }, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\sigma (a)\) is the spectrum of a. The symbol \(\lesssim _{(p)}\) means “less than or equal to, up to a term of order \(n^{-p}\)”as discussed below. Following some technical preliminaries (Sect. 1) we treat the real case (Sect.  2), extend to the complex case (Sect.  3), and then generalise to the case of a norm-unital Banach algebra (Sect.  4).

     

Continued fractions for some transcendental numbers

We consider series of the form

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{p}{q} +\sum _{j=2}^\infty \frac{1}{x_j}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(x_1=q\) and the integer sequence \((x_n)\) satisfies a certain non-autonomous recurrence of second order, which entails that \(x_n|x_{n+1}\) for \(n\ge 1\). It is shown that the terms of the sequence, and multiples of the ratios of successive terms, appear interlaced in the continued fraction expansion of the sum of the series, which is a transcendental number.