The $\lambda $-quiddities of size n are n-tuples of elements of a fixed set, solutions of a matrix equation appearing in the study of Coxeter’s friezes. Their number and properties are closely linked to the structure and the cardinality of the chosen set. Our main objective is an explicit formula giving the number of $\lambda $-quiddities of odd size, and a lower and upper bound for the number of $\lambda $-quiddities of even size, over the rings ${\mathbb {Z}}/2^{m}{\mathbb {Z}}$ ($m \geq 2$). We also give explicit formulae for the number of $\lambda $-quiddities of size n over ${\mathbb {Z}}/8{\mathbb {Z}}$.

Using properties of Ramanujan’s theta functions, we give an elementary proof of Hirschhorn’s conjecture on $2^n$-dissection of Euler’s product $E(q):=(q;q)_\infty $.

For $M,N,m\in \mathbb {N}$ with $M\geq 2, N\geq 1$ and $m \geq 2$, we define two families of sequences, $\mathcal {B}_{M,N}$ and $\mathcal {B}_{M,N,m}$. The nth term of $\mathcal {B}_{M,N}$ is obtained by expressing n in base M and recombining those digits in base N. The nth term of $\mathcal {B}_{M,N,m}$ is defined by $\mathcal {B}_{M,N,m}(n):=\mathcal {B}_{M,N}(n) \; (\textrm {mod}\;m)$. The special case $\mathcal {B}_{M,1,m}$, where $N=1$, yields the digit sum sequence $\mathbf {t}_{M,m}$ in base M mod m. We prove that $\mathcal {B}_{M,N}$ is the fixed point of a morphism $\mu _{M,N}$ at letter $0$, similar to a property of $\mathbf {t}_{M,m}$. Additionally, we show that $\mathcal {B}_{M,N,m}$ contains arbitrarily long palindromes if and only if $m=2$, mirroring the behaviour of the digit sum sequence. When $m\geq M$ and N, m are coprime, we establish that $\mathcal {B}_{M,N,m}$ contains no overlaps.

Let n be a positive integer and $\underline {n}=\{1,2,\ldots ,n\}$. A conjecture arising from certain polynomial near-ring codes states that if $k\geq 1$ and $a_{1},a_{2},\ldots ,a_{k}$ are distinct positive integers, then the symmetric difference $a_{1}\underline {n}\mathbin {\Delta }a_{2}\underline {n}\mathbin {\Delta }\cdots \mathbin {\Delta }a_{k}\underline {n}$ contains at least n elements. Here, $a_{i}\underline {n}=\{a_{i},2a_{i},\ldots ,na_{i}\}$ for each i. We prove this conjecture for arbitrary n and for $k=1,2,3$.

In an isolate-free graph G, a subset S of vertices is a semitotal dominating set of G if it is a dominating set of G and every vertex in S is within distance 2 of another vertex of S. The semitotal domination number of G, denoted by $\gamma _{t2}(G)$, is the minimum cardinality of a semitotal dominating set in G. Goddard, Henning and McPillan [‘Semitotal domination in graphs’, Utilitas Math. 94 (2014), 67–81] characterised the trees and graphs of minimum degree 2 with semitotal domination number half their order. In this paper, we characterise all graphs whose semitotal domination number is half their order.

For any positive integer n, let $\sigma (n)$ be the sum of all positive divisors of n. We prove that for every integer k with $1\leq k\leq 29$ and $(k,30)=1,$

$$ \begin{align*} \sum_{n\leq K}\sigma(30n)>\sum_{n\leq K}\sigma(30n+k) \end{align*} $$

for all $K\in \mathbb {N},$ which gives a positive answer to a problem posed by Pongsriiam [‘Sums of divisors on arithmetic progressions’, Period. Math. Hungar. 88 (2024), 443–460].

A cycle C of a graph G is dominating if $V(C)$ is a dominating set and $V(G)\backslash V(C)$ is an independent set. Wu et al. [‘Degree sums and dominating cycles’, Discrete Mathematics 344 (2021), Article no. 112224] proved that every longest cycle of a k-connected graph G on $n\geq 3$ vertices with $k\geq 2$ is dominating if the degree sum is more than $(k+1)(n+1)/3$ for any $k+1$ pairwise nonadjacent vertices. They also showed that this bound is sharp. In this paper, we show that the extremal graphs G for this condition satisfy $(n-2)/3K_1\vee (n+1)/3K_2 \subseteq G \subseteq K_{(n-2)/3}\vee (n+1)/3K_2$ or $2K_1\vee 3K_{(n-2)/3}\subseteq G \subseteq K_2\vee 3K_{(n-2)/3}.$

We investigate the set $T_{n}$ of the possible number of triangles in a graph on n vertices. The first main result says that every natural number less than $\binom {n}{3} - (\sqrt {2}+o(1) )n^{3/2} $ belongs to $T_{n}$. On the other hand, we show that there is a number $m = \binom {n}{3}-( \sqrt {2} +o(1))n^{3/2}$ that is not a member of $T_{n}$. In addition, we prove that there are two interlacing sequences $\binom {n}{3} - ( \sqrt {2} + o(1) )n^{3/2} = c_{1} \le d_{1} \le c_{2} \le d_{2} \le \cdots \le c_{s} \le d_{s} = \binom {n}{3}$ with $| c_{t} - d_{t}| = n-2-\binom {s - t +1}{2}$ such that $( c_{t}, d_{t} ) \cap T_{n} = \emptyset $ for all t. Moreover, we obtain a generalisation of these results for the set of the possible number of copies of a connected graph H in a graph on n vertices.

Ishitsuka et al. [‘Explicit calculation of the mod 4 Galois representation associated with the Fermat quartic’, Int. J. Number Theory 16(4) (2020), 881–905] found all points on the Fermat quartic ${F_4\colon x^4+y^4=z^4}$ over quadratic extensions of ${\mathbb {Q}}(\zeta _8)$, where $\zeta _8$ is the eighth primitive root of unity $e^{i\pi /4}$. Using Mordell’s technique, we give an alternative proof for the result of Ishitsuka et al. and extend it to the rational function field ${\mathbb {Q}}({\zeta _8})(T_1,T_2,\ldots ,T_n)$.

Let $k\geq 4$ be an integer. We prove that the set $\mathcal {O}$ of all nonzero generalised octagonal numbers is a k-additive uniqueness set for the set of multiplicative functions. That is, if a multiplicative function $f_k$ satisfies the condition

$$ \begin{align*} f_k(x_1+x_2+\cdots+x_k)=f_k(x_1)+f_k(x_2)+\cdots+f_k(x_k) \end{align*} $$

for arbitrary $x_1,\ldots ,x_k\in \mathcal {O}$, then $f_k$ is the identity function $f_k(n)=n$ for all $n\in \mathbb {N}$. We also show that $f_2$ and $f_3$ are not determined uniquely.

We investigate the discrepancy between the distributions of the random variable $\log L (\sigma , f \times f, X)$ and that of $\log L(\sigma +it, f \times f)$, that is,

$$ \begin{align*} D_{\sigma} (T) := \sup_{\mathcal{R}} |\mathbb{P}_T(\log L(\sigma+it, f \times f) \in \mathcal{R}) - \mathbb{P}(\log L(\sigma, f \times f, X) \in \mathcal{R})|, \end{align*} $$

where the supremum is taken over rectangles $\mathcal {R}$ with sides parallel to the coordinate axes. For fixed $T>3$ and $2/3 <\sigma _0 < \sigma < 1$, we prove that

$$ \begin{align*} D_{\sigma} (T) \ll \frac{1}{(\log T)^{\sigma}}. \end{align*} $$

One variant of the q-Catalan polynomials is defined in terms of Gaussian polynomials by

$$ \begin{align*}\mathcal{C}_k(q)=\bigg[\begin{matrix}{2k}\\ {k}\end{matrix}\bigg]_q-q \bigg[\begin{matrix}{2k}\\ {k+1} \end{matrix}\bigg]_q.\end{align*} $$

Liu [‘On a congruence involving q-Catalan numbers’, C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris 358 (2020), 211–215] studied congruences of the form $\sum _{k=0}^{n-1} q^k\mathcal {C}_k$ modulo the cyclotomic polynomial $\Phi _n(q)^2$, provided that $n\equiv \pm 1\pmod 3$. Apparently, the case $n\equiv 0\pmod 3$ has been missing from the literature. Our primary purpose is to fill this gap. In addition, we discuss a certain fascinating link to Dirichlet character sum identities.

Let n be a nonzero integer. A set S of positive integers is a Diophantine tuple with the property $D(n)$ if $ab+n$ is a perfect square for each $a,b \in S$ with $a \neq b$. It is of special interest to estimate the quantity $M_n$, the maximum size of a Diophantine tuple with the property $D(n)$. We show the contribution of intermediate elements is $O(\log \log |n|)$, improving a result by Dujella [‘Bounds for the size of sets with the property $D(n)$’, Glas. Mat. Ser. III 39(59)(2) (2004), 199–205]. As a consequence, we deduce that $M_n\leq (2+o(1))\log |n|$, improving the best known upper bound on $M_n$ by Becker and Murty [‘Diophantine m-tuples with the property $D(n)$’, Glas. Mat. Ser. III 54(74)(1) (2019), 65–75].

We establish upper bounds for moments of smoothed quadratic Dirichlet character sums under the generalized Riemann hypothesis, confirming a conjecture of M. Jutila [‘On sums of real characters’, Tr. Mat. Inst. Steklova 132 (1973), 247–250].

We establish a q-analogue of a supercongruence related to a supercongruence of Rodriguez-Villegas, which extends a q-congruence of Guo and Zeng [‘Some q-analogues of supercongruences of Rodriguez-Villegas’, J. Number Theory 145 (2014), 301–316]. The important ingredients in the proof include Andrews’ $_4\phi _3$ terminating identity.

Let $\mathcal {P}$ be the set of primes and $\pi (x)$ the number of primes not exceeding x. Let $P^+(n)$ be the largest prime factor of n, with the convention $P^+(1)=1$, and $ T_c(x)=\#\{p\le x:p\in \mathcal {P},P^+(p-1)\ge p^c\}. $ Motivated by a conjecture of Chen and Chen [‘On the largest prime factor of shifted primes’, Acta Math. Sin. (Engl. Ser.) 33 (2017), 377–382], we show that for any c with $8/9\le c<1$,

$$ \begin{align*} \limsup_{x\rightarrow\infty}T_c(x)/\pi(x)\le 8(1/c-1), \end{align*} $$

which clearly means that

$$ \begin{align*} \limsup_{x\rightarrow\infty}T_c(x)/\pi(x)\rightarrow 0 \quad \text{as } c\rightarrow 1. \end{align*} $$

We determine the characteristic polynomials of the matrices $[q^{\,j-k}+t]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$ and $[q^{\,j+k}+t]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$ for any complex number $q\not =0,1$. As an application, for complex numbers $a,b,c$ with $b\not =0$ and $a^2\not =4b$, and the sequence $(w_m)_{m\in \mathbb Z}$ with $w_{m+1}=aw_m-bw_{m-1}$ for all $m\in \mathbb Z$, we determine the exact value of $\det [w_{\,j-k}+c\delta _{jk}]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$.

We prove a nonabelian variant of the classical Mordell–Lang conjecture in the context of finite- dimensional central simple algebras. We obtain the following result as a particular case of a more general statement. Let K be an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, let $B_1,\dots ,B_r\in \mathrm {GL}_m(K)$ be matrices with multiplicatively independent eigenvalues and let V be a closed subvariety of $\mathrm {GL}_m(K)$ not passing through zero. Then there exist only finitely many elements of $\mathrm {GL}_m(K)$ of the form $B_1^{n_1}\cdots B_r^{n_r}$ (as we vary $n_1,\dots ,n_r$ in $\mathbb {Z}$) lying on the subvariety V.

A monic polynomial $f(x)\in {\mathbb Z}[x]$ of degree N is called monogenic if $f(x)$ is irreducible over ${\mathbb Q}$ and $\{1,\theta ,\theta ^2,\ldots ,\theta ^{N-1}\}$ is a basis for the ring of integers of ${\mathbb Q}(\theta )$, where $f(\theta )=0$. We prove that there exist exactly three distinct monogenic trinomials of the form $x^4+bx^2+d$ whose Galois group is the cyclic group of order 4. We also show that the situation is quite different when the Galois group is not cyclic.

We establish some inequalities that arise from truncating Lerch sums and derive uniform asymptotic formulae for the spt-crank of ordinary partitions. The uniform asymptotic formulae improve upon a result of Mao [‘Asymptotic formulas for spt-crank of partitions’, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 460(1) (2018), 121–139].