On the total number of prime factors of an odd perfect number

We say is perfect if , where denotes the sum of the positive divisors of . No odd perfect numbers are known, but it is well known that if such a number exists, it must have prime factorization of the form , where , , ..., are distinct primes and . We prove that if or for all , , then . We also prove as our main result that , where . This improves a result of Sayers given in 1986.

     

New techniques for bounds on the total number of prime factors of an odd perfect number

Let denote the sum of the positive divisors of . We say that is perfect if . Currently there are no known odd perfect numbers. It is known that if an odd perfect number exists, then it must be of the form , where are distinct primes and . Define the total number of prime factors of as . Sayers showed that . This was later extended by Iannucci and Sorli to show that . This was extended by the author to show that . Using an idea of Carl Pomerance this paper extends these results. The current new bound is .

     

Predicting nonlinear pseudorandom number generators

Let be a prime and let and be elements of the finite field of elements. The inversive congruential generator (ICG) is a sequence of pseudorandom numbers defined by the relation . We show that if sufficiently many of the most significant bits of several consecutive values of the ICG are given, one can recover the initial value (even in the case where the coefficients and are not known). We also obtain similar results for the quadratic congruential generator (QCG), , where . This suggests that for cryptographic applications ICG and QCG should be used with great care. Our results are somewhat similar to those known for the linear congruential generator (LCG), , but they apply only to much longer bit strings. We also estimate limits of some heuristic approaches, which still remain much weaker than those known for LCG.

     

Finding -strong pseudoprimes

Let be odd primes and . Put

Then we call the kernel, the triple the signature, and the height of , respectively. We call a -number if it is a Carmichael number with each prime factor . If is a -number and a strong pseudoprime to the bases for , we call a -spsp . Since -numbers have probability of error (the upper bound of that for the Rabin-Miller test), they often serve as the exact values or upper bounds of (the smallest strong pseudoprime to all the first prime bases). If we know the exact value of , we will have, for integers , a deterministic efficient primality testing algorithm which is easy to implement.

In this paper, we first describe an algorithm for finding -spsp(2)'s, to a given limit, with heights bounded. There are in total -spsp's with heights . We then give an overview of the 21978 - spsp(2)'s and tabulate of them, which are -spsp's to the first prime bases up to ; three numbers are spsp's to the first 11 prime bases up to 31. No -spsp's to the first prime bases with heights were found. We conjecture that there exist no -spsp's to the first prime bases with heights and so that

which was found by the author in an earlier paper. We give reasons to support the conjecture. The main idea of our method for finding those -spsp's is that we loop on candidates of signatures and kernels with heights bounded, subject those candidates of -spsp's and their prime factors to Miller's tests, and obtain the desired numbers. At last we speed our algorithm for finding larger -spsp's, say up to , with a given signature to more prime bases. Comparisons of effectiveness with Arnault's and our previous methods for finding -strong pseudoprimes to the first several prime bases are given.

     

The convergence of harmonic Ritz values, harmonic Ritz vectors, and refined harmonic Ritz vectors

This paper concerns a harmonic projection method for computing an approximation to an eigenpair of a large matrix . Given a target point and a subspace that contains an approximation to , the harmonic projection method returns an approximation to . Three convergence results are established as the deviation of from approaches zero. First, the harmonic Ritz value converges to if a certain Rayleigh quotient matrix is uniformly nonsingular. Second, the harmonic Ritz vector converges to if the Rayleigh quotient matrix is uniformly nonsingular and remains well separated from the other harmonic Ritz values. Third, better error bounds for the convergence of are derived when converges. However, we show that the harmonic projection method can fail to find the desired eigenvalue --in other words, the method can miss if it is very close to . To this end, we propose to compute the Rayleigh quotient of with respect to and take it as a new approximate eigenvalue. is shown to converge to once tends to , no matter how is close to . Finally, we show that if the Rayleigh quotient matrix is uniformly nonsingular, then the refined harmonic Ritz vector, or more generally the refined eigenvector approximation introduced by the author, converges. We construct examples to illustrate our theory.

     

Five consecutive positive odd numbers, none of which can be expressed as a sum of two prime powers

In this paper, we prove that there is an arithmetic progression of positive odd numbers for each term of which none of five consecutive odd numbers and can be expressed in the form , where is a prime and are nonnegative integers.

     

Solutions of the congruence

To supplement existing data, solutions of are tabulated for primes with and . For , five new solutions 2^{32}$"> are presented. One of these, for , also satisfies the ``reverse' congruence . An effective procedure for searching for such ``double solutions' is described and applied to the range , . Previous to this, congruences are generally considered for any and fixed prime to see where the smallest prime solution occurs.

     

Recovering signals from inner products involving prolate spheroidals in the presence of jitter

The paper deals with recovering band- and energy-limited signals from a finite set of perturbed inner products involving the prolate spheroidal wavefunctions. The measurement noise (bounded by ) and jitter meant as perturbation of the ends of the integration interval (bounded by ) are considered. The upper and lower bounds on the radius of information are established. We show how the error of the best algorithms depends on and . We prove that jitter causes error of order , where is a bandwidth, which is similar to the error caused by jitter in the case of recovering signals from samples.

     

On the absolute Mahler measure of polynomials having all zeros in a sector. II

Let be an algebraic integer of degree , not or a root of unity, all of whose conjugates are confined to a sector . In the paper On the absolute Mahler measure of polynomials having all zeros in a sector, G. Rhin and C. Smyth compute the greatest lower bound of the absolute Mahler measure ( of , for belonging to nine subintervals of . In this paper, we improve the result to thirteen subintervals of and extend some existing subintervals.

     

Counting primes in residue classes

We explain how the Meissel-Lehmer-Lagarias-Miller-Odlyzko method for computing can be used for computing efficiently , the number of primes congruent to modulo up to . As an application, we computed the number of prime numbers of the form less than for several values of up to and found a new region where is less than near .

     

A finite dimensional realization of the mollifier method for compact operator equations

We introduce and analyze a stable procedure for the approximation of where is the least residual norm solution of the minimal norm of the ill-posed equation , with compact operator between Hilbert spaces, and has some smoothness assumption. Our method is based on a finite number of singular values of and some finite rank operators. Our results are in a more general setting than the one considered by Rieder and Schuster (2000) and Nair and Lal (2003) with special reference to the mollifier method, and it is also applicable under fewer smoothness assumptions on .

     

A primitive trinomial of degree 6972593

The only primitive trinomials of degree over are and its reciprocal.

     

An estimate for the number of integers without large prime factors

denotes the number of positive integers and free of prime factors y$">. Hildebrand and Tenenbaum provided a good approximation of . However, their method requires the solution to the equation , and therefore it needs a large amount of time for the numerical solution of the above equation for large . Hildebrand also showed approximates for , where and is the unique solution to . Let be defined by for 0$">. We show approximates , and also approximates , where . Using these approximations, we give a simple method which approximates within a factor in the range , where is any positive constant.

     

Visible evidence for the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for modular abelian varieties of analytic rank zero

This paper provides evidence for the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for analytic rank  abelian varieties  that are optimal quotients of attached to newforms. We prove theorems about the ratio , develop tools for computing with , and gather data about certain arithmetic invariants of the nearly abelian varieties of level . Over half of these have analytic rank , and for these we compute upper and lower bounds on the conjectural order of  . We find that there are at least such for which the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture implies that is divisible by an odd prime, and we prove for of these that the odd part of the conjectural order of really divides by constructing nontrivial elements of using visibility theory. We also give other evidence for the conjecture. The appendix, by Cremona and Mazur, fills in some gaps in the theoretical discussion in their paper on visibility of Shafarevich-Tate groups of elliptic curves.

     

A hidden number problem in small subgroups

Boneh and Venkatesan have proposed a polynomial time algorithm for recovering a hidden element , where is prime, from rather short strings of the most significant bits of the residue of modulo for several randomly chosen . González Vasco and the first author have recently extended this result to subgroups of of order at least for all and to subgroups of order at least for almost all . Here we introduce a new modification in the scheme which amplifies the uniformity of distribution of the multipliers and thus extend this result to subgroups of order at least for all primes . As in the above works, we give applications of our result to the bit security of the Diffie-Hellman secret key starting with subgroups of very small size, thus including all cryptographically interesting subgroups.

     

Computing weight modular forms of level

For a prime we describe an algorithm for computing the Brandt matrices giving the action of the Hecke operators on the space of modular forms of weight and level . For we define a special Hecke stable subspace of which contains the space of modular forms with CM by the ring of integers of and we describe the calculation of the corresponding Brandt matrices.

     

Involutions and characters of upper triangular matrix groups

We study the realizability over of representations of the group of upper-triangular matrices over . We prove that all the representations of are realizable over if , but that if , has representations not realizable over . This theorem is a variation on a result that can be obtained by combining work of J. Arregi and A. Vera-López and of the authors, but the proof of the theorem in this paper is much more natural.

     

CM-fields with relative class number one

We will show that the normal CM-fields with relative class number one are of degrees . Moreover, if we assume the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, then the normal CM-fields with relative class number one are of degrees , and the CM-fields with class number one are of degrees . By many authors all normal CM-fields of degrees with class number one are known except for the possible fields of degree or . Consequently the class number one problem for normal CM-fields is solved under the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis except for these two cases.

     

Real zeros of Dedekind zeta functions of real quadratic fields

Let be a primitive, real and even Dirichlet character with conductor , and let be a positive real number. An old result of H. Davenport is that the cycle sums are all positive at and this has the immediate important consequence of the positivity of . We extend Davenport's idea to show that in fact for , 0$"> for all with so that one can deduce the positivity of by the nonnegativity of a finite sum for any . A simple algorithm then allows us to prove numerically that has no positive real zero for a conductor up to 200,000, extending the previous record of 986 due to Rosser more than 50 years ago. We also derive various estimates explicit in of the as well as the shifted cycle sums considered previously by Leu and Li for . These explicit estimates are all rather tight and may have independent interests.

     

Comparison theorems of Kolmogorov type and exact values of -widths on Hardy-Sobolev classes

Let be a strip in complex plane. denotes those -periodic, real-valued functions on which are analytic in the strip and satisfy the condition , . Osipenko and Wilderotter obtained the exact values of the Kolmogorov, linear, Gel'fand, and information -widths of in , , and 2-widths of in , , .

In this paper we continue their work. Firstly, we establish a comparison theorem of Kolmogorov type on , from which we get an inequality of Landau-Kolmogorov type. Secondly, we apply these results to determine the exact values of the Gel'fand -width of in , . Finally, we calculate the exact values of Kolmogorov -width, linear -width, and information -width of in , , .