English

On the random Chowla conjecture

Number Theory 2022-02-22 v2 Probability

Abstract

We show that for a Steinhaus random multiplicative function f:NDf:\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{D} and any polynomial P(x)Z[x]P(x)\in\mathbb{Z}[x] of deg P2\text{deg}\ P\ge 2 which is not of the form w(x+c)dw(x+c)^{d} for some wZw\in \mathbb{Z}, cQc\in \mathbb{Q}, we have 1xnxf(P(n))dCN(0,1),\frac{1}{\sqrt{x}}\sum_{n\le x} f(P(n)) \xrightarrow{d} \mathcal{CN}(0,1), where CN(0,1)\mathcal{CN}(0,1) is the standard complex Gaussian distribution with mean 00 and variance 1.1. This confirms a conjecture of Najnudel in a strong form. We further show that there almost surely exist arbitrary large values of x1,x\ge 1, such that nxf(P(n))deg Px(loglogx)1/2,|\sum_{n\le x} f(P(n))| \gg_{\text{deg}\ P} \sqrt{x} (\log \log x)^{1/2}, for any polynomial P(x)Z[x]P(x)\in\mathbb{Z}[x] with deg P2,\text{deg}\ P\ge 2, which is not a product of linear factors (over Q\mathbb{Q}). This matches the bound predicted by the law of the iterated logarithm. Both of these results are in contrast with the well-known case of linear phase P(n)=n,P(n)=n, where the partial sums are known to behave in a non-Gaussian fashion and the corresponding sharp fluctuations are speculated to be O(x(loglogx)14+ε)O(\sqrt{x}(\log \log x)^{\frac{1}{4}+\varepsilon}) for any ε>0\varepsilon>0.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.08767,
  title  = {On the random Chowla conjecture},
  author = {Oleksiy Klurman and Ilya D. Shkredov and Max Wenqiang Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.08767},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Minor changes to the Introduction. Added remark about possibility of extending the proofs to sparse sets. Added references to the work of Cassaigne-Ferenczi-Mauduit-Rivat-Sarkozy and Borwein-Choi-Ganguly on the sign changes of $\lambda (P(n)).$ All other sections remain unchanged

R2 v1 2026-06-24T09:43:01.739Z