Let A be a finite set of integers and FA(x) = ∑a∈A exp(2πiax) be its exponential sum. McGehee, Pigno and Smith and Konyagin have independently proved that ∥FA∥1 ≥ c log|A| for some absolute constant c. The lower bound has the correct order of magnitude and was first conjectured by Littlewood. In this paper we present lower bounds on the L1-norm of exponential sums of sets in the d-dimensional grid d. We show that ∥FA∥1 is considerably larger than log|A| when A ⊂ d has multidimensional structure. We furthermore prove similar lower bounds for sets in , which in a technical sense are multidimensional and discuss their connection to an inverse result on the theorem of McGehee, Pigno and Smith and Konyagin.

We extend the the combinatorics of tableaux to the study of Brauer walled Brauer and partition algebras. In particular, we provide uniform constructions of Murphy bases and ‘Specht’ filtrations of permutation modules. This allows us to give a uniform construction of semistandard bases of their quasi-hereditary covers.

We study the cohomology of the space of immersed genus g surfaces in a simply-connected manifold. We compute the rational cohomology of this space in a stable range which goes to infinity with g. In fact, in this stable range we are also able to obtain information about torsion in the cohomology of this space, as long as we localise away from (g-1).

In a recent paper [5], Lagarias and Soundararajan study the y-smooth solutions to the equation a+b=c. Conditionally under the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis, they obtain an estimate for the number of those solutions weighted by a compactly supported smooth function, as well as a lower bound for the number of bounded unweighted solutions. In this paper, we prove a more precise conditional estimate for the number of weighted solutions that is valid when y is relatively large with respect to x, so as to connect our estimate with the one obtained by La Bretèche and Granville in a recent work [2]. We also prove, conditionally under the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis, the conjectured upper bound for the number of bounded unweighted solutions, thus obtaining its exact asymptotic behaviour.

We study the decay of μ(B(x,r)∩C)/μ(B(x,r)) as r ↓ 0 for different kinds of measures μ on ℝn and various cones C around x. As an application, we provide sufficient conditions that imply that the local dimensions can be calculated via cones almost everywhere.

Granville and Soundararajan have recently introduced the notion of pretentiousness in the study of multiplicative functions of modulus bounded by 1, essentially the idea that two functions which are similar in a precise sense should exhibit similar behavior. It turns out, somewhat surprisingly, that this does not directly extend to detecting power cancellation - there are multiplicative functions which exhibit as much cancellation as possible in their partial sums that, modified slightly, give rise to functions which exhibit almost as little as possible. We develop two new notions of pretentiousness under which power cancellation can be detected, one of which applies to a much broader class of multiplicative functions.

Let K be a number field and r an integer. Given an elliptic curve E, defined over K, we consider the problem of counting the number of degree two prime ideals of K with trace of Frobenius equal to r. Under certain restrictions on K, we show that “on average” the number of such prime ideals with norm less than or equal to x satisfies an asymptotic identity that is in accordance with standard heuristics. This work is related to the classical Lang–Trotter conjecture and extends the work of several authors.

We give a short proof of the uniqueness of finite spherical buildings of rank at least 3 in terms of the structure of the rank 2 residues and use this result to prove a result making it possible to identify an arbitrary finite group of Lie type from knowledge of its “parabolic structure” alone. Our proof also involves a connection between loops, “Latin chamber systems” and buildings.

Let { = V × ℝl : V ∈ G(n−l,m−l)} be the family of m-dimensional subspaces of ℝn containing {0} × ℝl, and let : ℝn → be the orthogonal projection onto . We prove that the mapping V ↦ Dim (B) is almost surely constant for any analytic set B ⊂ ℝn, where Dim denotes either Hausdorff or packing dimension.