English

On (not) computing the Mobius function using bounded depth circuits

Number Theory 2012-06-04 v4

Abstract

Any function F : {0,...,N-1} -> {-1,1} such that F(x) can be computed from the binary digits of x using a bounded depth circuit is orthogonal to the Mobius function mu in the sense that E_{0 <= x <= N-1} mu(x)F(x) = o(1). The proof combines a result of Linial, Mansour and Nisan with techniques of Katai and Harman-Katai, used in their work on finding primes with specified digits.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1103.4991,
  title  = {On (not) computing the Mobius function using bounded depth circuits},
  author = {Ben Green},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.4991},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

10 pages, to appear in Combinatorics, Probability and Computing. A few further small corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:44:34.458Z