Related papers: Exceptions to the Erd\H os--Straus--Schinzel conje…

The Schinzel Hypothesis is a conjecture about irreducible polynomials in one variable over the integers: under some standard condition, they should assume infinitely many prime values at integers. We consider a relative version: if the…

We give a quintet of proofs resulting from questions posed by Erd\H{o}s. These questions concern ordinary lines in planar point sets, sequences with uniformly small exponential sums, $K_4$-free $4$-critical graphs with few chords in any…

In 1979, Erd\H{o}s conjectured that if $m = O(n^{2/3})$, then $ex(n, m, \{C_4, C_6 \}) = O(n)$. This conjecture was disproven by several papers and the current best-known bounds for this problem are $$ c_1n^{1 + \frac{1}{15}} \leq ex(n,…

We prove that if $f(n)$ is a Steinhaus or Rademacher random multiplicative function, there almost surely exist arbitrarily large values of $x$ for which $|\sum_{n \leq x} f(n)| \geq \sqrt{x} (\log\log x)^{1/4+o(1)}$. This is the first such…

We prove an old conjecture of Erd{\H o}s and Graham on sums of unit fractions: There exists a constant $b>0$ such that if we $r$-color the integers in $2,b^r]$, then there exists a monochromatic set $S$ such that $\sum_{n \in S} 1/n=1$.

We pose 100 new conjectures on representations involving primes or related things, which might interest number theorists and stimulate further research. Below are five typical examples: (i) For any positive integer $n$, there exists…

The Kahane--Salem--Zygmund inequality for multilinear forms in $\ell_{\infty}$ spaces claims that, for all positive integers $m,n_{1},...,n_{m}$, there exists an $m$-linear form $A\colon\ell_{\infty}^{n_{1}}\times\cdots\times…

For a positive integer $n$ let $\mathfrak{P}_n=\prod_{s_p(n)\ge p} p,$ where $p$ runs over all primes and $s_p(n)$ is the sum of the base $p$ digits of $n$. For all $n$ we prove that $\mathfrak{P}_n$ is divisible by all "small" primes with…

Since their introduction by Erd\H{o}s in 1950, covering systems (that is, finite collections of arithmetic progressions that cover the integers) have been extensively studied, and numerous questions and conjectures have been posed regarding…

We formulate some refinements of Goldbach's conjectures based on heuristic arguments and numerical data. For instance, any even number greater than 4 is conjectured to be a sum of two primes with one prime being 3 mod 4. In general, for…

An old question of Erdos asks if there exists, for each number N, a finite set S of integers greater than N and residue classes r(n) mod n for n in S whose union is all the integers. We prove that if $\sum_{n\in S} 1/n$ is bounded for such…

A set of integers greater than 1 is primitive if no element divides another. Erd\H{o}s proved in 1935 that the sum of $1/(n \log n)$ for $n$ running over a primitive set $A$ is universally bounded over all choices for $A$. In 1988 he asked…

The basic theme of this paper is the fact that if $A$ is a finite set of integers, then the sum and product sets cannot both be small. A precise formulation of this fact is Conjecture 1 below due to Erd\H os-Szemer\'edi [E-S]. (see also…

Let $k\geq 2$ be a positive integer. We study concentration results for the ordered representation functions $r^{\leq}_k(A,n) = \# \big\{ (a_1 \leq \dots \leq a_k) \in A^k : a_1+\dots+a_k = n \big\}$ and $r^{<}_k(A,n) = \# \big\{ (a_1 <…

We introduce a natural definition for sums of the form \[ \sum_{\nu=1}^x f(\nu) \] when the number of terms x is a rather arbitrary real or even complex number. The resulting theory includes the known interpolation of the factorial by the…

The numbers $R_n$ and $W_n$ are defined as \begin{align*} R_n=\sum_{k=0}^{n}{n+k\choose 2k}{2k\choose k}\frac{1}{2k-1},\ \text{and}\ W_n=\sum_{k=0}^{n}{n+k\choose 2k}{2k\choose k}\frac{3}{2k-3}. \end{align*} We prove that, for any positive…

Let $u_{2j}$ be the product of the odd positive integers $< 2j$. For $n$ an integer $\ge 1$, define \[ f(x)=\sum_{j=0}^{n}a_j\frac{x^{2j}}{u_{2j+2}}, \] where the $a_j$'s are arbitrary integers with $|a_0|=1$. In 1929, I. Schur established…

A well-known conjecture asserts that, for any given positive real number $\lambda$ and nonnegative integer $m$, the proportion of positive integers $n \le x$ for which the interval $(n,n + \lambda\log n]$ contains exactly $m$ primes is…

Let $\Sigma=\{a_1, \ldots , a_n\}$ be a set of positive integers with $a_1 < \ldots < a_n$ such that all $2^n$ subset sums are pairwise distinct. A famous conjecture of Erd\H{o}s states that $a_n>C\cdot 2^n$ for some constant $C$, while the…

Let $p_n$ denote the $n$th prime and $g_n:=p_{n+1}-p_n$ the $n$th prime gap. We demonstrate the existence of infinitely many values of $n$ for which $g_n>g_{n+1}>\cdots>g_{n+m}$ with $m\gg \log\log\log n$ and similarly for the reversed…