We prove the existence and give constructions of a $(p(k)-1)$-fold perfect resolvable $(v,k,1)$-Mendelsohn design for any integers $v>k\geq 2$ with $v\equiv 1\hspace{0.2em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}\,k$ such that there exists a finite Frobenius group whose kernel $K$ has order $v$ and whose complement contains an element $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$ of order $k$, where $p(k)$ is the least prime factor of $k$. Such a design admits $K\rtimes \langle \unicode[STIX]{x1D719}\rangle$ as a group of automorphisms and is perfect when $k$ is a prime. As an application we prove that for any integer $v=p_{1}^{e_{1}}\cdots p_{t}^{e_{t}}\geq 3$ in prime factorisation and any prime $k$ dividing $p_{i}^{e_{i}}-1$ for $1\leq i\leq t$, there exists a resolvable perfect $(v,k,1)$-Mendelsohn design that admits a Frobenius group as a group of automorphisms. We also prove that, if $k$ is even and divides $p_{i}-1$ for $1\leq i\leq t$, then there are at least $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(k)^{t}$ resolvable $(v,k,1)$-Mendelsohn designs that admit a Frobenius group as a group of automorphisms, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}$ is Euler’s totient function.

The paper introduces a graph theory variation of the general position problem: given a graph $G$, determine a largest set $S$ of vertices of $G$ such that no three vertices of $S$ lie on a common geodesic. Such a set is a max-gp-set of $G$ and its size is the gp-number $\text{gp}(G)$ of $G$. Upper bounds on $\text{gp}(G)$ in terms of different isometric covers are given and used to determine the gp-number of several classes of graphs. Connections between general position sets and packings are investigated and used to give lower bounds on the gp-number. It is also proved that the general position problem is NP-complete.

We extend known results concerning crossing numbers by giving the crossing number of the join product $G+D_{n}$, where the connected graph $G$ consists of one $4$-cycle and of two leaves incident with the same vertex of the $4$-cycle, and $D_{n}$ consists of $n$ isolated vertices. The proofs are done with the help of software that generates all cyclic permutations for a given number $k$ and creates a graph for calculating the distances between all $(k-1)!$ vertices of the graph.

The total distance (or Wiener index) of a connected graph $G$ is the sum of all distances between unordered pairs of vertices of $G$. DeLaViña and Waller [‘Spanning trees with many leaves and average distance’, Electron. J. Combin.15(1) (2008), R33, 14 pp.] conjectured in 2008 that if $G$ has diameter $D>2$ and order $2D+1$, then the total distance of $G$ is at most the total distance of the cycle of the same order. In this note, we prove that this conjecture is true for 2-connected graphs.

Let $c\geq 2$ be a positive integer. Terai [‘A note on the Diophantine equation $x^{2}+q^{m}=c^{n}$’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc.90 (2014), 20–27] conjectured that the exponential Diophantine equation $x^{2}+(2c-1)^{m}=c^{n}$ has only the positive integer solution $(x,m,n)=(c-1,1,2)$. He proved his conjecture under various conditions on $c$ and $2c-1$. In this paper, we prove Terai’s conjecture under a wider range of conditions on $c$ and $2c-1$. In particular, we show that the conjecture is true if $c\equiv 3\hspace{0.6em}({\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}4)$ and $3\leq c\leq 499$.

Let $G$ be an infinite graph on countably many vertices and let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ be a closed, infinite set of real numbers. We establish the existence of an unbounded self-adjoint operator whose graph is $G$ and whose spectrum is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$.

We prove new integral representations of the approximation forms in zeta values.

We present a simple proof of the Chebotarev density theorem for finite morphisms of quasi-projective varieties over finite fields following an idea of Fried and Kosters for function fields. The key idea is to interpret the number of rational points with a given Frobenius conjugacy class as the number of rational points of a twisted variety, which is then bounded by the Lang–Weil estimates.

By Smith’s theorem, if a cubic graph has a Hamiltonian cycle, then it has a second Hamiltonian cycle. Thomason [‘Hamilton cycles and uniquely edge-colourable graphs’, Ann. Discrete Math.3 (1978), 259–268] gave a simple algorithm to find the second cycle. Thomassen [private communication] observed that if there exists a polynomially bounded algorithm for finding a second Hamiltonian cycle in a cubic cyclically 4-edge connected graph $G$, then there exists a polynomially bounded algorithm for finding a second Hamiltonian cycle in any cubic graph $G$. In this paper we present a class of cyclically 4-edge connected cubic bipartite graphs $G_{i}$ with $16(i+1)$ vertices such that Thomason’s algorithm takes $12(2^{i}-1)+3$ steps to find a second Hamiltonian cycle in $G_{i}$.

Putnam [‘On the non-periodicity of the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function’, Amer. J. Math.76 (1954), 97–99] proved that the sequence of consecutive positive zeros of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}(\frac{1}{2}+it)$ does not contain any infinite arithmetic progression. We extend this result to a certain class of zeta functions.

We give transcendence measures for $p$-adic numbers $\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}$, having good rational (respectively, integer) approximations, that force them to be either $p$-adic $S$-numbers or $p$-adic $T$-numbers.

We establish some supercongruences for the truncated $_{2}F_{1}$ and $_{3}F_{2}$ hypergeometric series involving the $p$-adic gamma functions. Some of these results extend the four Rodriguez-Villegas supercongruences on the truncated $_{3}F_{2}$ hypergeometric series. Related supercongruences modulo $p^{3}$ are proposed as conjectures.

We show that over any field $F$ of characteristic 2 and 2-rank $n$, there exist $2^{n}$ bilinear $n$-fold Pfister forms that have no slot in common. This answers a question of Becher [‘Triple linkage’, Ann.$K$-Theory, to appear] in the negative. We provide an analogous result also for quadratic Pfister forms.

For a positive integer $d$ and a nonnegative number $\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}$, let $N(d,\unicode[STIX]{x1D709})$ be the number of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in \overline{\mathbb{Q}}$ of degree at most $d$ and Weil height at most $\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}$. We prove upper and lower bounds on $N(d,\unicode[STIX]{x1D709})$. For each fixed $\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}>0$, these imply the asymptotic formula $\log N(d,\unicode[STIX]{x1D709})\sim \unicode[STIX]{x1D709}d^{2}$ as $d\rightarrow \infty$, which was conjectured in a question at Mathoverflow [https://mathoverflow.net/questions/177206/].

We prove the reciprocity law for the twisted second moments of Dirichlet $L$-functions over rational function fields, corresponding to two irreducible polynomials. This formula is the analogue of the formulas for Dirichlet $L$-functions over $\mathbb{Q}$ obtained by Conrey [‘The mean-square of Dirichlet $L$-functions’, arXiv:0708.2699 [math.NT] (2007)] and Young [‘The reciprocity law for the twisted second moment of Dirichlet $L$-functions’, Forum Math. 23(6) (2011), 1323–1337].

Gunningham [‘Spin Hurwitz numbers and topological quantum field theory’, Geom. Topol.20(4) (2016), 1859–1907] constructed an extended topological quantum field theory (TQFT) to obtain a closed formula for all spin Hurwitz numbers. In this note, we use a gluing theorem for spin Hurwitz numbers to re-prove Gunningham’s formula. We also describe a TQFT formalism naturally induced by the gluing theorem.

The ‘Borcherds products everywhere’ construction [Gritsenko et al., ‘Borcherds products everywhere’, J. Number Theory148 (2015), 164–195] creates paramodular Borcherds products from certain theta blocks. We prove that the $q$-order of every such Borcherds product lies in a sequence $\{C_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}\}$, depending only on the $q$-order $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ of the theta block. Similarly, the $q$-order of the leading Fourier–Jacobi coefficient of every such Borcherds product lies in a sequence $\{A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}\}$, and this is the sequence $\{a_{n}\}$ from work of Newman and Shanks in connection with a family of series for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$. Our proofs use a combinatorial formula giving the Fourier expansion of any theta block in terms of its germ.

Let $K$ be a number field with a ring of integers ${\mathcal{O}}$. We follow Ferraguti and Micheli [‘On the Mertens–Cèsaro theorem for number fields’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc.93(2) (2016), 199–210] to define a density for subsets of ${\mathcal{O}}$ and use it to find the density of the set of $j$-wise relatively $r$-prime $m$-tuples of algebraic integers. This provides a generalisation and analogue for several results on natural densities of integers and ideals of algebraic integers.

We study an operation, that we call lifting, creating nonisomorphic monomial curves from a single monomial curve. Our main result says that all but finitely many liftings of a monomial curve have Cohen–Macaulay tangent cones even if the tangent cone of the original curve is not Cohen–Macaulay. This implies that the Betti sequence of the tangent cone is eventually constant under this operation. Moreover, all liftings have Cohen–Macaulay tangent cones when the original monomial curve has a Cohen–Macaulay tangent cone. In this case, all the Betti sequences are just the Betti sequence of the original curve.

Three families of examples are given of sets of $(0,1)$-matrices whose pairwise products form a basis for the underlying full matrix algebra. In the first two families, the elements have rank at most two and some of the products can have multiple entries. In the third example, the matrices have equal rank $\!\sqrt{n}$ and all of the pairwise products are single-entried $(0,1)$-matrices.