No Arabic abstract
Let $a$ and $b$ be positive integers. In 1946, ErdH{o}s and Niven proved that there are only finitely many positive integers $n$ for which one or more of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/b, 1/(a+b),..., 1/(an-a+b)$ are integers. In this paper, we show that for any integer $k$ with $1le kle n$, the $k$-th elementary symmetric function of $1/b, 1/(a+b),..., 1/(an-a+b)$ is not an integer except that either $b=n=k=1$ and $age 1$, or $a=b=1, n=3$ and $k=2$. This refines the ErdH{o}s-Niven theorem and answers an open problem raised by Chen and Tang in 2012.
Given an abelian group $G$, it is natural to ask whether there exists a permutation $pi$ of $G$ that destroys all nontrivial 3-term arithmetic progressions (APs), in the sense that $pi(b) - pi(a) eq pi(c) - pi(b)$ for every ordered triple $(a,b,c) in G^3$ satisfying $b-a = c-b eq 0$. This question was resolved for infinite groups $G$ by Hegarty, who showed that there exists an AP-destroying permutation of $G$ if and only if $G/Omega_2(G)$ has the same cardinality as $G$, where $Omega_2(G)$ denotes the subgroup of all elements in $G$ whose order divides $2$. In the case when $G$ is finite, however, only partial results have been obtained thus far. Hegarty has conjectured that an AP-destroying permutation of $G$ exists if $G = mathbb{Z}/nmathbb{Z}$ for all $n eq 2,3,5,7$, and together with Martinsson, he has proven the conjecture for all $n > 1.4 times 10^{14}$. In this paper, we show that if $p$ is a prime and $k$ is a positive integer, then there is an AP-destroying permutation of the elementary $p$-group $(mathbb{Z}/pmathbb{Z})^k$ if and only if $p$ is odd and $(p,k) otin {(3,1),(5,1), (7,1)}$.
Erd{o}s and Niven proved in 1946 that for any positive integers $m$ and $d$, there are at most finitely many integers $n$ for which at least one of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/m, 1/(m+d), ..., 1/(m+(n-1)d)$ are integers. Recently, Wang and Hong refined this result by showing that if $ngeq 4$, then none of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/m, 1/(m+d), ..., 1/(m+(n-1)d)$ is an integer for any positive integers $m$ and $d$. Let $f$ be a polynomial of degree at least $2$ and of nonnegative integer coefficients. In this paper, we show that none of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/f(1), 1/f(2), ..., 1/f(n)$ is an integer except for $f(x)=x^{m}$ with $mgeq2$ being an integer and $n=1$.
We prove a result on the distribution of the general divisor functions in arithmetic progressions to smooth moduli which exceed the square root of the length.
We study a Dirichlet series in two variables which counts primitive three-term arithmetic progressions of squares. We show that this multiple Dirichlet series has meromorphic continuation to $mathbb{C}^2$ and use Tauberian methods to obtain counts for arithmetic progressions of squares and rational points on $x^2+y^2=2$.
For relatively prime positive integers $u_0$ and $r$, we consider the least common multiple $L_n:=mathrm{lcm}(u_0,u_1,ldots, u_n)$ of the finite arithmetic progression ${u_k:=u_0+kr}_{k=0}^n$. We derive new lower bounds on $L_n$ which improve upon those obtained previously when either $u_0$ or $n$ is large. When $r$ is prime, our best bound is sharp up to a factor of $n+1$ for $u_0$ properly chosen, and is also nearly sharp as $ntoinfty$.