Related papers: On a character sum problem of H. Cohn

It is known that the weight (that is, the number of nonzero coefficients) of a univariate polynomial over a field of characteristic zero is larger than the multiplicity of any of its nonzero roots. We extend this result to an appropriate…

Write $T(n)$ as the sum of the reciprocals of the primes which divide $n$. Write $H(n) = \prod_{p|n}p/(p-1)$ where the product is over the prime divisors of $n$. We prove new bounds for $T(n)$ and $H(n)$ in terms of the smallest prime…

In this note a critical point result for differentiable functionals is exploited in order to prove that a suitable class of one-dimensional fractional problems admits at least one non-trivial solution under an asymptotical behaviour of the…

A few elementary estimates of a basic character sum over the prime numbers are derived here. These estimates are nontrivial for character sums modulo large q. In addition, an omega result for character sums over the primes is also included.

A \emph{simple} matrix is a (0,1)-matrix with no repeated columns. For a (0,1)-matrix $F$, we say that a (0,1)-matrix $A$ has $F$ as a \emph{Berge hypergraph} if there is a submatrix $B$ of $A$ and some row and column permutation of $F$,…

We show that if $A$ is a finite set of non-negative integers then the number of zeros of the function \[ f_A(\theta) = \sum_{a \in A} \cos(a\theta), \] in $[0,2\pi]$, is at least $(\log \log \log |A|)^{1/2-\varepsilon}$. This gives the…

Suppose that h in F[x,y,z], char F=2, defines a nodal cubic. In earlier papers we made a precise conjecture as to the Hilbert-Kunz functions attached to the powers of h. Assuming this conjecture we showed that a class of characteristic 2…

Let $f(x_1,...,x_k)$ be a polynomial over a field $K$. This paper considers such questions as the enumeration of the number of nonzero coefficients of $f$ or of the number of coefficients equal to $\alpha\in K^*$. For instance, if $K=\ff_q$…

We classify the finite groups with the property that any two different character codegrees are coprime. In general, we conjecture that if $k$ is a positive integer such that for any prime $p$ the number of character codegrees of a finite…

We use an estimate for character sums over finite fields of Katz to solve open problems of Montgomery and Turan. Let h=>2 be an integer. We prove that inf_{|z_k| => 1} max_{v=1,...,n^h} |sum_{k=1}^n z_k^v| <= (h-1+o(1)) sqrt n. This gives…

Suppose that we are given a formal power series of many variables with coefficients in $\mathbb{R}$ (or $\mathbb{C}$) and we want to compute its $n$-th (multiplicative) root. As can be expected coefficients of the root have to satisfy a…

An elementary approach is shown which derives the values of the Gauss sums over $\mathbb F_{p^r}$, $p$ odd, of a cubic character without using Davenport-Hasse's theorem. New links between Gauss sums over different field extensions are shown…

Let $q$ be a power of a prime, let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be the finite field with $q$ elements and let $n \geq 2$. For a polynomial $h(x) \in \mathbb{F}_q[x]$ of degree $n \in \mathbb{N}$ and a subset $W \subseteq [0,n] := \{0, 1, \ldots, n\}$, we…

A monic polynomial in F_q[t] of degree n over a finite field F_q of odd characteristic can be written as the sum of two irreducible monic elements in F_q[t] of degrees n and n-1 if q is larger than a bound depending only on n. The main tool…

Let $\chi$ be an irreducible character of a group $G.$ We denote the sum of the codegrees of the irreducible characters of $G$ by $S_c(G)=\sum_{\chi\in {\rm Irr}(G)}{\rm cod}(\chi).$ We consider the question if $S_c(G)\leq S_c(C_n)$ is true…

We establish several sum-product estimates over finite fields that involve polynomials and rational functions. First, |f(A)+f(A)|+|AA| is substantially larger than |A| for an arbitrary polynomial f over F_p. Second, a characterization is…

Let $(G_n(x))_{n=0}^\infty$ be a $d$-th order linear recurrence sequence having polynomial characteristic roots, one of which has degree strictly greater than the others. Moreover, let $m\geq 2$ be a given integer. We ask for…

We prove that any positive rational number is the sum of distinct unit fractions with denominators in $\{p-1 : p\textrm{ prime}\}$. The same conclusion holds for the set $\{p-h : p\textrm{ prime}\}$ for any $h\in\mathbb{Z}\backslash\{0\}$,…

Let $f$ be a multiplicative function which satisfies \[ f(a^2+b^2+c^2+d^2) = f(a^2+b^2)+f(c^2+d^2) \] for positive integers $a$, $b$, $c$, and $d$. We show that $f$ is the identity function provided that $f(3)\,f(11) \ne 0$. Otherwise,…

We give formulas for the number of polynomials over a finite field with given root multiplicities, in particular in cases when the formula is surprisingly simple (a power of q). Besides this concrete interpretation, we also prove an…