Recurrence and non-uniformity of bracket polynomials

A bracket polynomial on the integers is a function formed using the operations of addition, multiplication and taking fractional parts. For a fairly large class of bracket polynomials we show that if p is a bracket polynomial of degree k-1 on [N] then the function f defined by f(n) = e(p(n)) has Gowers U^k[N]-norm bounded away from zero, uniformly in N. We establish this result by first reducing it to a certain recurrence property of sets of bracket polynomials. Specifically, for a fairly large class of bracket polynomials we show that if p_1, ..., p_r are bracket polynomials then their values, modulo 1, are all close to zero on at least some constant proportion of the points 1, ..., N. The proofs rely on two deep results from the literature. The first is work of V. Bergelson and A. Leibman showing that an arbitrary bracket polynomial can be expressed in terms of a polynomial sequence on a nilmanifold. The second is a theorem of B. Green and T. Tao describing the quantitative distribution properties of such polynomial sequences. We give elementary alternative proofs of the first result, without reference to nilmanifolds, in certain "low-complexity" special cases.