Let $E/\mathbb {Q}$ be an elliptic curve. For a prime p of good reduction, let $r(E,p)$ be the smallest non-negative integer that gives the x-coordinate of a point of maximal order in the group $E(\mathbb {F}_p)$ . We prove unconditionally that $r(E,p)> 0.72\log \log p$ for infinitely many p, and $r(E,p)> 0.36 \log p$ under the assumption of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis. These can be viewed as elliptic curve analogues of classical lower bounds on the least primitive root of a prime.

In 1965, A. Livingston conjectured the $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$-linear independence of logarithms of values of the sine function at rational arguments. In 2016, S. Pathak disproved the conjecture. In this article, we give a new proof of Livingston’s conjecture using some fundamental trigonometric identities. Moreover, we show that a stronger version of her theorem is true. In fact, we modify this conjecture by introducing a co-primality condition, and in that case we provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the conjecture to be true. Finally, we identify a maximal linearly independent subset of the numbers considered in Livingston’s conjecture.

Let $n$ be a positive integer and $a$ an integer prime to $n$. Multiplication by $a$ induces a permutation over $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}=\{\overline{0},\overline{1},\ldots ,\overline{n-1}\}$. Lerch’s theorem gives the sign of this permutation. We explore some applications of Lerch’s result to permutation problems involving quadratic residues modulo $p$ and confirm some conjectures posed by Sun [‘Quadratic residues and related permutations and identities’, Preprint, 2018, arXiv:1809.07766]. We also study permutations involving arbitrary $k$th power residues modulo $p$ and primitive roots modulo a power of $p$.

Let $p$ be a prime. If an integer $g$ generates a subgroup of index $t$ in $(\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z})^{\ast },$ then we say that $g$ is a $t$-near primitive root modulo $p$. We point out the easy result that each coprime residue class contains a subset of primes $p$ of positive natural density which do not have $g$ as a $t$-near primitive root and we prove a more difficult variant.

In this note, we give an upper bound for the number of elements from the interval $[1,p^{1/4\sqrt{e}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}}]$ necessary to generate the finite field $\mathbb{F}_{p}^{\ast }$ with $p$ an odd prime. The general result depends on the distribution of the divisors of $p-1$ and can be used to deduce results which hold for almost all primes.

If the centre of a group $G$ is trivial, then so is the centre of its automorphism group. We study the structure of the centre of the automorphism group of a group $G$ when the centre of $G$ is a cyclic group. In particular, it is shown that the exponent of $Z(\text{Aut}(G))$ is less than or equal to the exponent of $Z(G)$ in this case.