English

Cosine polynomials with few zeros

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2021-02-10 v3 Combinatorics Number Theory

Abstract

In a celebrated paper, Borwein, Erd\'elyi, Ferguson and Lockhart constructed cosine polynomials of the form fA(x)=aAcos(ax), f_A(x) = \sum_{a \in A} \cos(ax), with ANA\subseteq \mathbb{N}, A=n|A|= n and as few as n5/6+o(1)n^{5/6+o(1)} zeros in [0,2π][0,2\pi], thereby disproving an old conjecture of J.E. Littlewood. Here we give a sharp analysis of their constructions and, as a result, prove that there exist examples with as few as C(nlogn)2/3C(n\log n)^{2/3} roots.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.01695,
  title  = {Cosine polynomials with few zeros},
  author = {Tomas Juškevičius and Julian Sahasrabudhe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.01695},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

17 pages. A few typos fixed

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:18:07.003Z