English

On Shusterman's Goldbach-type problem for sign patterns of the Liouville function

Number Theory 2024-12-24 v1

Abstract

Let λ\lambda be the Liouville function. Assuming the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis for Dirichlet LL-functions (GRH), we show that for every sufficiently large even integer NN there are a,b1a,b \geq 1 such that a+b=N and λ(a)=λ(b)=1. a+b = N \text{ and } \lambda(a) = \lambda(b) = -1. This conditionally answers an analogue of the binary Goldbach problem for the Liouville function, posed by Shusterman. The latter is a consequence of a quantitative lower bound on the frequency of sign patterns attained by (λ(n),λ(Nn))(\lambda(n),\lambda(N-n)), for sufficiently large primes NN. We show, assuming GRH, that there is a constant C>0C > 0 such that for each pattern (η1,η2){1,+1}2(\eta_1,\eta_2) \in \{-1,+1\}^2 and each prime NN0N \geq N_0, {n<N:(λ(n),λ(Nn))=(η1,η2)}NeC(loglogN)6. |\{n < N : (\lambda(n),\lambda(N-n)) = (\eta_1,\eta_2)\}| \gg N e^{-C(\log \log N)^{6}}. The proof makes essential use of the Pierce expansion of rational numbers n/Nn/N, which may be of interest in other binary problems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.17199,
  title  = {On Shusterman's Goldbach-type problem for sign patterns of the Liouville function},
  author = {Alexander P. Mangerel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.17199},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

23 pages; comments welcome!