Let $n,r,k\in \mathbb{N}$. An $r$-colouring of the vertices of a regular $n$-gon is any mapping $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}:\mathbb{Z}_{n}\rightarrow \{1,2,\ldots ,r\}$. Two colourings are equivalent if one of them can be obtained from another by a rotation of the polygon. An $r$-ary necklace of length $n$ is an equivalence class of $r$-colourings of $\mathbb{Z}_{n}$. We say that a colouring is $k$-alternating if all $k$ consecutive vertices have pairwise distinct colours. We compute the smallest number $r$ for which there exists a $k$-alternating $r$-colouring of $\mathbb{Z}_{n}$ and we count, for any $r$, 2-alternating $r$-colourings of $\mathbb{Z}_{n}$ and 2-alternating $r$-ary necklaces of length $n$.

As usual, $P_{n}$ ($n\geq 1$) denotes the path on $n$ vertices. The gem is the graph consisting of a $P_{4}$ together with an additional vertex adjacent to each vertex of the $P_{4}$. A graph is called ($P_{5}$, gem)-free if it has no induced subgraph isomorphic to a $P_{5}$ or to a gem. For a graph $G$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(G)$ denotes its chromatic number and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(G)$ denotes the maximum size of a clique in $G$. We show that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(G)\leq \lfloor \frac{3}{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(G)\rfloor$ for every ($P_{5}$, gem)-free graph $G$.

We prove that, given a positive integer $m$, there is a sequence $\{n_{i}\}_{i=1}^{k}$ of positive integers such that

$$\begin{eqnarray}m=\frac{1}{n_{1}}+\frac{1}{n_{2}}+\cdots +\frac{1}{n_{k}}\end{eqnarray}$$

$\{1/n_{i}\}_{i=1}^{k}$

In this note, we provide refined estimates of two sums involving the Euler totient function,

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{n\leq x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}\biggl(\biggl[\frac{x}{n}\biggr]\biggr)\quad \text{and}\quad \mathop{\sum }_{n\leq x}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}([x/n])}{[x/n]},\end{eqnarray}$$

$[x]$

$x$

A Ducci sequence is a sequence of integer $n$-tuples generated by iterating the map

$$\begin{eqnarray}D:(a_{1},a_{2},\ldots ,a_{n})\mapsto (|a_{1}-a_{2}|,|a_{2}-a_{3}|,\ldots ,|a_{n}-a_{1}|).\end{eqnarray}$$

$P(n)$

$n$

$n$

$p\equiv 5\hspace{0.6em}({\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}8)$

$2$

$x^{2}-py^{2}=-4$

$x$

$y$

Let $D$ be a positive nonsquare integer, $p$ a prime number with $p\nmid D$ and $0<\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}<0.847$. We show that there exist effectively computable constants $C_{1}$ and $C_{2}$ such that if there is a solution to $x^{2}+D=p^{n}$ with $p^{n}>C_{1}$, then for every $x>C_{2}$ with $x^{2}+D=p^{n}m$ we have $m>x^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}}$. As an application, we show that for $x\neq \{5,1015\}$, if the equation $x^{2}+76=101^{n}m$ holds, then $m>x^{0.14}$.

Motivated by Ramanujan’s continued fraction and the work of Richmond and Szekeres [‘The Taylor coefficients of certain infinite products’, Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged)40(3–4) (1978), 347–369], we investigate vanishing coefficients along arithmetic progressions in four quotients of infinite product expansions and obtain similar results. For example, $a_{1}(5n+4)=0$, where $a_{1}(n)$ is defined by

$$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle {\displaystyle \frac{(q,q^{4};q^{5})_{\infty }^{3}}{(q^{2},q^{3};q^{5})_{\infty }^{2}}}=\mathop{\sum }_{n=0}^{\infty }a_{1}(n)q^{n}. & & \displaystyle \nonumber\end{eqnarray}$$

We prove a lower bound for the large sieve with square moduli.

A strongly concave composition of $n$ is an integer partition with strictly decreasing and then increasing parts. In this paper we give a uniform asymptotic formula for the rank statistic of a strongly concave composition introduced by Andrews et al. [‘Modularity of the concave composition generating function’, Algebra Number Theory7(9) (2013), 2103–2139].

Suppose that $f(x)=x^{n}+A(Bx+C)^{m}\in \mathbb{Z}[x]$, with $n\geq 3$ and $1\leq m<n$, is irreducible over $\mathbb{Q}$. By explicitly calculating the discriminant of $f(x)$, we prove that, when $\gcd (n,mB)=C=1$, there exist infinitely many values of $A$ such that the set $\{1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D703},\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{n-1}\}$ is an integral basis for the ring of integers of $\mathbb{Q}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})$, where $f(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})=0$.

Let $E$ be an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ without complex multiplication. Let $p\geq 5$ be a prime in $\mathbb{Q}$ and suppose that $E$ has good ordinary reduction at $p$. We study the dual Selmer group of $E$ over the compositum of the $\text{GL}_{2}$ extension and the anticyclotomic $\mathbb{Z}_{p}$-extension of an imaginary quadratic extension as an Iwasawa module.

Let $K$ be a field that admits a cyclic Galois extension of degree $n\geq 2$. The symmetric group $S_{n}$ acts on $K^{n}$ by permutation of coordinates. Given a subgroup $G$ of $S_{n}$ and $u\in K^{n}$, let $V_{G}(u)$ be the $K$-vector space spanned by the orbit of $u$ under the action of $G$. In this paper we show that, for a special family of groups $G$ of affine type, the dimension of $V_{G}(u)$ can be computed via the greatest common divisor of certain polynomials in $K[x]$. We present some applications of our results to the cases $K=\mathbb{Q}$ and $K$ finite.

We obtain a new sum–product estimate in prime fields for sets of large cardinality. In particular, we show that if $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_{p}$ satisfies $|A|\leq p^{64/117}$ then $\max \{|A\pm A|,|AA|\}\gtrsim |A|^{39/32}.$ Our argument builds on and improves some recent results of Shakan and Shkredov [‘Breaking the 6/5 threshold for sums and products modulo a prime’, Preprint, 2018, arXiv:1806.07091v1] which use the eigenvalue method to reduce to estimating a fourth moment energy and the additive energy $E^{+}(P)$ of some subset $P\subseteq A+A$. Our main novelty comes from reducing the estimation of $E^{+}(P)$ to a point–plane incidence bound of Rudnev [‘On the number of incidences between points and planes in three dimensions’, Combinatorica 38(1) (2017), 219–254] rather than a point–line incidence bound used by Shakan and Shkredov.

The word $w=[x_{i_{1}},x_{i_{2}},\ldots ,x_{i_{k}}]$ is a simple commutator word if $k\geq 2,i_{1}\neq i_{2}$ and $i_{j}\in \{1,\ldots ,m\}$ for some $m>1$. For a finite group $G$, we prove that if $i_{1}\neq i_{j}$ for every $j\neq 1$, then the verbal subgroup corresponding to $w$ is nilpotent if and only if $|ab|=|a||b|$ for any $w$-values $a,b\in G$ of coprime orders. We also extend the result to a residually finite group $G$, provided that the set of all $w$-values in $G$ is finite.

We give some sufficient conditions for the periodicity of entire functions based on a conjecture of C. C. Yang, using the concepts of value sharing, unique polynomial of entire functions and Picard exceptional value.

Let $E$ and $D$ be open subsets of $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ such that $\overline{D}$ is a compact subset of $E$, and let $v$ be a supertemperature on $E$. We call a temperature $u$ on $D$extendable by$v$ if there is a supertemperature $w$ on $E$ such that $w=u$ on $D$ and $w=v$ on $E\backslash \overline{D}$. Such a temperature need not be a thermic minorant of $v$ on $D$. We show that either there is a unique temperature extendable by $v$, or there are infinitely many. Examples of temperatures extendable by $v$ include the greatest thermic minorant $GM_{v}^{D}$ of $v$ on $D$, and the Perron–Wiener–Brelot solution of the Dirichlet problem $S\!_{v}^{D}$ on $D$ with boundary values the restriction of $v$ to $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}D$. In the case where these two examples are distinct, we give a formula for producing infinitely many more. Clearly $GM_{v}^{D}$ is the greatest extendable thermic minorant, but we also prove that there is a least one, which is not necessarily equal to $S\!_{v}^{D}$.

A system of functional equations satisfied by the components of a quadratic function is derived via their corresponding circulant matrix. Given such a system of functional equations, general solutions are determined and a stability result for such a system is established.

Let $G$ be a locally compact group and $K$ a closed subgroup of $G$. Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE},$$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$ be representations of $K$ and $G$ respectively. Moore’s version of the Frobenius reciprocity theorem was established under the strong conditions that the underlying homogeneous space $G/K$ possesses a right-invariant measure and the representation space $H(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE})$ of the representation $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}$ of $K$ is a Hilbert space. Here, the theorem is proved in a more general setting assuming only the existence of a quasi-invariant measure on $G/K$ and that the representation spaces $\mathfrak{B}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE})$ and $\mathfrak{B}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$ are Banach spaces with $\mathfrak{B}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$ being reflexive. This result was originally established by Kleppner but the version of the proof given here is simpler and more transparent.

We prove that positive solutions of an integral equation of Wolff type are radially symmetric and decreasing about some point in $R^{n}$. The hypotheses allow a wider range of exponents and are easier to apply than those in previous work.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. A $C^{\ast }$-algebra is said to be $n$-subhomogeneous if all its irreducible representations have dimension at most $n$. We give various approximation properties characterising $n$-subhomogeneous $C^{\ast }$-algebras.