A set $S\subset {\mathbb {N}}$ is a Sidon set if all pairwise sums $s_1+s_2$ (for $s_1, s_2\in S$, $s_1\leqslant s_2$) are distinct. A set $S\subset {\mathbb {N}}$ is an asymptotic basis of order 3 if every sufficiently large integer $n$ can be written as the sum of three elements of $S$. In 1993, Erdős, Sárközy and Sós asked whether there exists a set $S$ with both properties. We answer this question in the affirmative. Our proof relies on a deep result of Sawin on the $\mathbb {F}_q[t]$-analogue of Montgomery's conjecture for convolutions of the von Mangoldt function.

In 1946, Erdős and Niven proved that no two partial sums of the harmonic series can be equal. We present a generalisation of the Erdős–Niven theorem by showing that no two partial sums of the series $\sum _{k=0}^\infty {1}/{(a+bk)}$ can be equal, where a and b are positive integers. The proof of our result uses analytic and p-adic methods.

We consider the reduction of an elliptic curve defined over the rational numbers modulo primes in a given arithmetic progression and investigate how often the subgroup of rational points of this reduced curve is cyclic.

We prove that neither a prime nor an l-almost prime number theorem holds in the class of regular Toeplitz subshifts. But when a quantitative strengthening of the regularity with respect to the periodic structure involving Euler’s totient function is assumed, then the two theorems hold.

Let $a_1$ , $a_2$ , and $a_3$ be distinct reduced residues modulo q satisfying the congruences $a_1^2 \equiv a_2^2 \equiv a_3^2 \ (\mathrm{mod}\ q)$ . We conditionally derive an asymptotic formula, with an error term that has a power savings in q, for the logarithmic density of the set of real numbers x for which $\pi (x;q,a_1)> \pi (x;q,a_2) > \pi (x;q,a_3)$ . The relationship among the $a_i$ allows us to normalize the error terms for the $\pi (x;q,a_i)$ in an atypical way that creates mutual independence among their distributions, and also allows for a proof technique that uses only elementary tools from probability.

Under sufficiently strong assumptions about the first prime in an arithmetic progression, we prove that the number of Carmichael numbers up to $X$ is $\gg X^{1-R}$, where $R=(2+o(1))\log \log \log \log X/\text{log}\log \log X$. This is close to Pomerance’s conjectured density of $X^{1-R}$ with $R=(1+o(1))\log \log \log X/\text{log}\log X$.

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.

We prove asymptotic formulas for the number of integers at most $x$ that can be written as the product of $k~({\geqslant}2)$ distinct primes $p_{1}\cdots p_{k}$ with each prime factor in an arithmetic progression $p_{j}\equiv a_{j}\hspace{0.2em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}q$, $(a_{j},q)=1$ $(q\geqslant 3,1\leqslant j\leqslant k)$. For any $A>0$, our result is uniform for $2\leqslant k\leqslant A\log \log x$. Moreover, we show that there are large biases toward certain arithmetic progressions $(a_{1}\hspace{0.2em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}q,\ldots ,a_{k}\hspace{0.2em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}q)$, and such biases have connections with Mertens’ theorem and the least prime in arithmetic progressions.

We prove the analog of Cramér’s short intervals theorem for primes in arithmetic progressions and prime ideals, under the relevant Riemann hypothesis. Both results are uniform in the data of the underlying structure. Our approach is based mainly on the inertia property of the counting functions of primes and prime ideals.

We show that substantially more than a quarter of the odd integers of the form $pq$ up to $x$, with $p,q$ both prime, satisfy $p\equiv q\equiv 3~(\text{mod}\,4)$.

In this paper we show that sieve methods used previously to investigate primes in short intervals and corresponding Goldbach-type problems can be modified to obtain results on primes in Beatty sequences in short intervals.

We prove that every integer $n\geqslant 10$ such that $n\not \equiv 1\text{ mod }4$ can be written as the sum of the square of a prime and a square-free number. This makes explicit a theorem of Erdős that every sufficiently large integer of this type may be written in such a way. Our proof requires us to construct new explicit results for primes in arithmetic progressions. As such, we use the second author’s numerical computation regarding the generalised Riemann hypothesis to extend the explicit bounds of Ramaré–Rumely.

Let $A\subset \{1,\dots ,N\}$ be a set of prime numbers containing no non-trivial arithmetic progressions. Suppose that $A$ has relative density ${\it\alpha}=|A|/{\it\pi}(N)$, where ${\it\pi}(N)$ denotes the number of primes in the set $\{1,\dots ,N\}$. By modifying Helfgott and De Roton’s work [Improving Roth’s theorem in the primes. Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN2011 (4) (2011), 767–783], we improve their bound and show that

$$\begin{eqnarray}{\it\alpha}\ll \frac{(\log \log \log N)^{6}}{\log \log N}.\end{eqnarray}$$

Building on the concept of pretentious multiplicative functions, we give a new and largely elementary proof of the best result known on the counting function of primes in arithmetic progressions.

Given an elliptic curve E and a positive integer N, we consider the problem of counting the number of primes p for which the reduction of E modulo p possesses exactly N points over 𝔽p. On average (over a family of elliptic curves), we show bounds that are significantly better than what is trivially obtained by the Hasse bound. Under some additional hypotheses, including a conjecture concerning the short-interval distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the average.

In this paper we generalize and extend work by Languasco, Perreli and Zaccagnini on the Montgomery–Hooley theorem in short intervals. We are thus able to obtain asymptotic formulae for the mean-square error in the distribution of general sequences in arithmetic progressions in short intervals. As applications we consider lower and upper bound approximations to the characteristic function of the primes in a short interval and an average over short intervals for the von Mangoldt function.

Let a be an integer different from 0, ±1, or a perfect square. We consider a conjecture of Erdős which states that #{p:ℓa(p)=r}≪εrε for any ε>0, where ℓa(p) is the order of a modulo p. In particular, we see what this conjecture says about Artin’s primitive root conjecture and compare it to the generalized Riemann hypothesis and the ABC conjecture. We also extend work of Goldfeld related to divisors of p+a and the order of a modulo p.

Let be a commutative algebraic group defined over a number field K. For a prime ℘ in K where has good reduction, let N℘,n be the number of n-torsion points of the reduction of modulo ℘ where n is a positive integer. When is of dimension one and n is relatively prime to a fixed finite set of primes depending on , we determine the average values of N℘,n as the prime ℘ varies. This average value as a function of n always agrees with a divisor function.