On correlations between class numbers of imaginary quadratic fields

Let $h(-n)$ be the class number of the imaginary quadratic field with discriminant $-n$. We establish an asymtotic formula for correlations involving $h(-n)$ and $h(-n-l)$, over fundamental discriminants that avoid the congruence class $1\pmod{8}$. Our result is uniform in the shift $l$, and the proof uses an identity of Gauss relating $h(-n)$ to representations of integers as sums of three squares. We also prove analogous results on correlations involving $r_Q(n)$, the number of representations of an integer $n$ by an integral positive definite quadratic form $Q$.