Let $k$ be a finite field and $L$ be the function field of a curve $C/k$ of genus $g\geq 1$. In the first part of this note we show that the number of separable $S$-integral points on a constant elliptic curve $E/L$ is bounded solely in terms of $g$ and the size of $S$. In the second part we assume that $L$ is the function field of a hyperelliptic curve $C_{A}:s^{2}=A(t)$, where $A(t)$ is a square-free $k$-polynomial of odd degree. If $\infty$ is the place of $L$ associated to the point at infinity of $C_{A}$, then we prove that the set of separable $\{\infty \}$-points can be bounded solely in terms of $g$ and does not depend on the Mordell–Weil group $E(L)$. This is done by bounding the number of separable integral points over $k(t)$ on elliptic curves of the form $E_{A}:A(t)y^{2}=f(x)$, where $f(x)$ is a polynomial over $k$. Additionally, we show that, under an extra condition on $A(t)$, the existence of a separable integral point of ‘small’ height on the elliptic curve $E_{A}/k(t)$ determines the isomorphism class of the elliptic curve $y^{2}=f(x)$.

We show that, on graphs which have precisely three distinct Laplacian eigenvalues, heat diffusion enjoys a monotonic behaviour.

We discuss a truncated identity of Euler and present a combinatorial proof of it. We also derive two finite identities as corollaries. As an application, we establish two related $q$-congruences for sums of $q$-Catalan numbers, one of which has been proved by Tauraso [‘$q$-Analogs of some congruences involving Catalan numbers’, Adv. Appl. Math. 48 (2012), 603–614] by a different method.

In this note we use some $q$-congruences proved by the method of ‘creative microscoping’ to prove two conjectures on supercongruences involving central binomial coefficients. In particular, we confirm the $m=5$ case of Conjecture 1.1 of Guo [‘Some generalizations of a supercongruence of Van Hamme’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct.28 (2017), 888–899].

A digraph is called oriented if there is at most one arc between two distinct vertices. An oriented graph $D$ is nonsingular if its adjacency matrix $A(D)$ is nonsingular. We characterise all nonsingular oriented graphs from three classes: graphs in which cycles are vertex disjoint, graphs in which all cycles share exactly one common vertex and graphs formed by cycles sharing a common path. As a straightforward corollary, the singularity of oriented bicyclic graphs is determined.

Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}>1$ be a real number and define the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$-transformation on $[0,1]$ by $T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}:x\mapsto \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}x\hspace{0.6em}({\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}1)$. Let $f:[0,1]\rightarrow [0,1]$ and $g:[0,1]\rightarrow [0,1]$ be two Lipschitz functions. The main result of the paper is the determination of the Hausdorff dimension of the set

$$\begin{eqnarray}W(f,g,\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{2})=\big\{(x,y)\in [0,1]^{2}:|T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}^{n}x-f(x)|<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}^{-n\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{1}(x)},|T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}^{n}y-g(y)|<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}^{-n\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{2}(y)}~\text{for infinitely many}~n\in \mathbb{N}\big\},\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{1}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{2}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{1}(x)\leq \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{2}(y)$

$x,y\in [0,1]$

Let $X$ be a nonempty set and ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$ the power set of $X$. The aim of this paper is to identify the unital subrings of ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$ and to compute its cardinality when it is finite. It is proved that any topology $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$ on $X$ such that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}^{c}$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}^{c}=\{U^{c}\mid U\in \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}\}$, is a unital subring of ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$. It is also shown that $X$ is finite if and only if any unital subring of ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$ is a topology $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$ on $X$ such that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}^{c}$ if and only if the set of unital subrings of ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$ is finite. As a consequence, if $X$ is finite with cardinality $n\geq 2$, then the number of unital subrings of ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$ is equal to the $n$th Bell number and the supremum of the lengths of chains of unital subalgebras of ${\mathcal{P}}(X)$ is equal to $n-1$.

We show, under some natural restrictions, that some semigroup orbits of polynomials cannot contain too many elements of small multiplicative order modulo a large prime $p$, extending previous work of Shparlinski [‘Multiplicative orders in orbits of polynomials over finite fields’, Glasg. Math. J.60(2) (2018), 487–493].

For an irrational number $x\in [0,1)$, let $x=[a_{1}(x),a_{2}(x),\ldots ]$ be its continued fraction expansion with partial quotients $\{a_{n}(x):n\geq 1\}$. Given $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}\in \mathbb{N}$, for $n\geq 1$, the $n$th longest block function of $x$ with respect to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}$ is defined by $L_{n}(x,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9})=\max \{k\geq 1:a_{j+1}(x)=\cdots =a_{j+k}(x)=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}~\text{for some}~j~\text{with}~0\leq j\leq n-k\}$, which represents the length of the longest consecutive sequence whose elements are all $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}$ from the first $n$ partial quotients of $x$. We consider the growth rate of $L_{n}(x,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9})$ as $n\rightarrow \infty$ and calculate the Hausdorff dimensions of the level sets and exceptional sets arising from the longest block function.

We prove that every sufficiently large even integer can be represented as the sum of two squares of primes, four cubes of primes and 28 powers of two. This improves the result obtained by Liu and Lü [‘Two results on powers of 2 in Waring–Goldbach problem’, J. Number Theory 131(4) (2011), 716–736].

We study a question on minimal asymptotic bases asked by Nathanson [‘Minimal bases and powers of 2’, Acta Arith. 49 (1988), 525–532].

A system of quadratic forms is associated to every generalised quadratic form over a division algebra with involution of the first kind in characteristic two. It is shown that this system determines the isotropy behaviour and the isometry class of generalised quadratic forms. An application of this construction to the Witt index of generalised quadratic forms is also given.

Following recent investigations of vanishing coefficients in infinite products, we show that such instances are very rare when the infinite product is among a family of theta-quotients of modulus five. We also prove that a general family of products of theta functions of modulus five can always be effectively 5-dissected.

In this paper, we investigate $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}(m,n)$, the number of partitions of the bipartite number$(m,n)$ into steadily decreasing parts, introduced by Carlitz [‘A problem in partitions’, Duke Math. J.30 (1963), 203–213]. We give a relation between $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}(m,n)$ and the crank statistic $M(m,n)$ for integer partitions. Using this relation, we establish some uniform asymptotic formulas for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}(m,n)$.

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

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

$P(n)$

$n$

$P(n)$

$n$

We show that an irreducible family ${\mathcal{S}}$ of complex $n\times n$ matrices satisfies Paz’s conjecture if it contains a rank-one matrix. We next investigate properties of families of rank-one matrices. If ${\mathcal{R}}$ is a linearly independent, irreducible family of rank-one matrices then (i) ${\mathcal{R}}$ has length at most $n$, (ii) if all pairwise products are nonzero, ${\mathcal{R}}$ has length 1 or 2, (iii) if ${\mathcal{R}}$ consists of elementary matrices, its minimum spanning length $M$ is the smallest integer $M$ such that every elementary matrix belongs to the set of words in ${\mathcal{R}}$ of length at most $M$. Finally, for any integer $k$ dividing $n-1$, there is an irreducible family of elementary matrices with length $k+1$.

Let $\mathbb{Z}$ and $\mathbb{Z}^{+}$ be the set of integers and the set of positive integers, respectively. For $a,b,c,d,n\in \mathbb{Z}^{+}$, let $t(a,b,c,d;n)$ be the number of representations of $n$ by $\frac{1}{2}ax(x+1)+\frac{1}{2}by(y+1)+\frac{1}{2}cz(z+1)+\frac{1}{2}dw(w+1)$ with $x,y,z,w\in \mathbb{Z}$. Using theta function identities we prove 13 transformation formulas for $t(a,b,c,d;n)$ and evaluate $t(2,3,3,8;n)$, $t(1,1,6,24;n)$ and $t(1,1,6,8;n)$.

We present a complete characterisation of the radial asymptotics of degree-one Mahler functions as $z$ approaches roots of unity of degree $k^{n}$, where $k$ is the base of the Mahler function, as well as some applications concerning transcendence and algebraic independence. For example, we show that the generating function of the Thue–Morse sequence and any Mahler function (to the same base) which has a nonzero Mahler eigenvalue are algebraically independent over $\mathbb{C}(z)$. Finally, we discuss asymptotic bounds towards generic points on the unit circle.

We investigate the arithmetic properties of the second-order mock theta function $B(q)$ and establish two identities for the coefficients of this function along arithmetic progressions. As applications, we prove several congruences for these coefficients.

Let $p$ be a prime, $G$ a solvable group and $P$ a Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$. We prove that $P$ is normal in $G$ if and only if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(1)_{p}^{2}$ divides $|G:\ker (\unicode[STIX]{x1D711})|_{p}$ for all monomial monolithic irreducible $p$-Brauer characters $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}$ of $G$.