For $E \subset \mathbb {N}$, a subset $R \subset \mathbb {N}$ is E-intersective if for every $A \subset E$ having positive relative density, $R \cap (A - A) \neq \varnothing $. We say that R is chromatically E-intersective if for every finite partition $E=\bigcup _{i=1}^k E_i$, there exists i such that $R\cap (E_i-E_i)\neq \varnothing $. When $E=\mathbb {N}$, we recover the usual notions of intersectivity and chromatic intersectivity. We investigate to what extent the known intersectivity results hold in the relative setting when $E = \mathbb {P}$, the set of primes, or other sparse subsets of $\mathbb {N}$. Among other things, we prove the following: (1) the set of shifted Chen primes $\mathbb {P}_{\mathrm {Chen}} + 1$ is both intersective and $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (2) there exists an intersective set that is not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (3) every $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set is intersective; (4) there exists a chromatically $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set which is not intersective (and therefore not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective).

We show that there is a set $S \subseteq {\mathbb N}$ with lower density arbitrarily close to $1$ such that, for each sufficiently large real number $\alpha $, the inequality $|m\alpha -n| \geq 1$ holds for every pair $(m,n) \in S^2$. On the other hand, if $S \subseteq {\mathbb N}$ has density $1$, then, for each irrational $\alpha>0$ and any positive $\varepsilon $, there exist $m,n \in S$ for which $|m\alpha -n|<\varepsilon $.

Arithmetic quasidensities are a large family of real-valued set functions partially defined on the power set of $\mathbb {N}$, including the asymptotic density, the Banach density and the analytic density. Let $B \subseteq \mathbb {N}$ be a nonempty set covering $o(n!)$ residue classes modulo $n!$ as $n\to \infty $ (for example, the primes or the perfect powers). We show that, for each $\alpha \in [0,1]$, there is a set $A\subseteq \mathbb {N}$ such that, for every arithmetic quasidensity $\mu $, both A and the sumset $A+B$ are in the domain of $\mu $ and, in addition, $\mu (A + B) = \alpha $. The proof relies on the properties of a little known density first considered by Buck [‘The measure theoretic approach to density’, Amer. J. Math. 68 (1946), 560–580].

Let $(x_n)_{n\geq 0}$ be a linear recurrence of order $k\geq 2$ satisfying $x_n=a_1x_{n-1}+a_2x_{n-2}+\cdots +a_kx_{n-k}$ for all integers $n\geq k$, where $a_1,\ldots ,a_k,x_0,\ldots , x_{k-1}\in \mathbb {Z},$ with $a_k\neq 0$. Sanna [‘The quotient set of k-generalised Fibonacci numbers is dense in $\mathbb {Q}_p$’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc. 96(1) (2017), 24–29] posed the question of classifying primes p for which the quotient set of $(x_n)_{n\geq 0}$ is dense in $\mathbb {Q}_p$. We find a sufficient condition for denseness of the quotient set of the kth-order linear recurrence $(x_n)_{n\geq 0}$ satisfying $ x_{n}=a_1x_{n-1}+a_2x_{n-2}+\cdots +a_kx_{n-k}$ for all integers $n\geq k$ with initial values $x_0=\cdots =x_{k-2}=0,x_{k-1}=1$, where $a_1,\ldots ,a_k\in \mathbb {Z}$ and $a_k=1$. We show that, given a prime p, there are infinitely many recurrence sequences of order $k\geq 2$ whose quotient sets are not dense in $\mathbb {Q}_p$. We also study the quotient sets of linear recurrence sequences with coefficients in certain arithmetic and geometric progressions.

Let G be a $\sigma $ -finite abelian group, i.e., $G=\bigcup _{n\geq 1} G_n$ where $(G_n)_{n\geq 1}$ is a nondecreasing sequence of finite subgroups. For any $A\subset G$ , let $\underline {\mathrm {d}}( A ):=\liminf _{n\to \infty }\frac {|A\cap G_n|}{|G_n|}$ be its lower asymptotic density. We show that for any subsets A and B of G, whenever $\underline {\mathrm {d}}( A+B )<\underline {\mathrm {d}}( A )+\underline {\mathrm {d}}( B )$ , the sumset $A+B$ must be periodic, that is, a union of translates of a subgroup $H\leq G$ of finite index. This is exactly analogous to Kneser’s theorem regarding the density of infinite sets of integers. Further, we show similar statements for the upper asymptotic density in the case where $A=\pm B$ . An analagous statement had already been proven by Griesmer in the very general context of countable abelian groups, but the present paper provides a much simpler argument specifically tailored for the setting of $\sigma $ -finite abelian groups. This argument relies on an appeal to another theorem of Kneser, namely the one regarding finite sumsets in an abelian group.

We show that there exist uncountably many (tall and nontall) pairwise nonisomorphic density-like ideals on $\omega $ which are not generalized density ideals. In addition, they are nonpathological. This answers a question posed by Borodulin-Nadzieja et al. in [this Journal, vol. 80 (2015), pp. 1268–1289]. Lastly, we provide sufficient conditions for a density-like ideal to be necessarily a generalized density ideal.

We investigate additive properties of sets $A,$ where $A=\{a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_k\}$ is a monotone increasing set of real numbers, and the differences of consecutive elements are all distinct. It is known that $|A+B|\geq c|A||B|^{1/2}$ for any finite set of numbers $B.$ The bound is tight up to the constant multiplier. We give a new proof to this result using bounds on crossing numbers of geometric graphs. We construct examples showing the limits of possible improvements. In particular, we show that there are arbitrarily large sets with different consecutive differences and sub-quadratic sumset size.

We examine a recursive sequence in which $s_n$ is a literal description of what the binary expansion of the previous term $s_{n-1}$ is not. By adapting a technique of Conway, we determine the limiting behaviour of $\{s_n\}$ and dynamics of a related self-map of $2^{\mathbb {N}}$ . Our main result is the existence and uniqueness of a pair of binary sequences, each the complement-description of the other. We also take every opportunity to make puns.

For every integer $k\geq 2$ and every $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$, we define the $k$-directions sets of $A$ as $D^{k}(A):=\{\boldsymbol{a}/\Vert \boldsymbol{a}\Vert :\boldsymbol{a}\in A^{k}\}$ and $D^{\text{}\underline{k}}(A):=\{\boldsymbol{a}/\Vert \boldsymbol{a}\Vert :\boldsymbol{a}\in A^{\text{}\underline{k}}\}$, where $\Vert \cdot \Vert$ is the Euclidean norm and $A^{\text{}\underline{k}}:=\{\boldsymbol{a}\in A^{k}:a_{i}\neq a_{j}\text{ for all }i\neq j\}$. Via an appropriate homeomorphism, $D^{k}(A)$ is a generalisation of the ratio set$R(A):=\{a/b:a,b\in A\}$. We study $D^{k}(A)$ and $D^{\text{}\underline{k}}(A)$ as subspaces of $S^{k-1}:=\{\boldsymbol{x}\in [0,1]^{k}:\Vert \boldsymbol{x}\Vert =1\}$. In particular, generalising a result of Bukor and Tóth, we provide a characterisation of the sets $X\subseteq S^{k-1}$ such that there exists $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ satisfying $D^{\text{}\underline{k}}(A)^{\prime }=X$, where $Y^{\prime }$ denotes the set of accumulation points of $Y$. Moreover, we provide a simple sufficient condition for $D^{k}(A)$ to be dense in $S^{k-1}$. We conclude with questions for further research.

Let $\mathcal {P}(\mathbf{N})$ be the power set of N. We say that a function $\mu ^\ast : \mathcal {P}(\mathbf{N}) \to \mathbf{R}$ is an upper density if, for all X, Y ⊆ N and h, k ∈ N+, the following hold: (f1) $\mu ^\ast (\mathbf{N}) = 1$; (f2) $\mu ^\ast (X) \le \mu ^\ast (Y)$ if X ⊆ Y; (f3) $\mu ^\ast (X \cup Y) \le \mu ^\ast (X) + \mu ^\ast (Y)$; (f4) $\mu ^\ast (k\cdot X) = ({1}/{k}) \mu ^\ast (X)$, where k · X : = {kx: x ∈ X}; and (f5) $\mu ^\ast (X + h) = \mu ^\ast (X)$. We show that the upper asymptotic, upper logarithmic, upper Banach, upper Buck, upper Pólya and upper analytic densities, together with all upper α-densities (with α a real parameter ≥ −1), are upper densities in the sense of our definition. Moreover, we establish the mutual independence of axioms (f1)–(f5), and we investigate various properties of upper densities (and related functions) under the assumption that (f2) is replaced by the weaker condition that $\mu ^\ast (X)\le 1$ for every X ⊆ N. Overall, this allows us to extend and generalize results so far independently derived for some of the classical upper densities mentioned above, thus introducing a certain amount of unification into the theory.

In this paper we prove that decomposable forms, or homogeneous polynomials $F\left( {{x}_{1}}\,,\,.\,.\,.\,,\,{{x}_{n}} \right)$ with integer coefficients that split completely into linear factors over $\mathbb{C}$, take on infinitely many square-free values subject to simple necessary conditions, and they have $\text{deg}\,f\,\le \,2n\,+\mid 2$ for all irreducible factors $f$ of $F$. This work generalizes a theorem of Greaves.

The quotient set of $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ is defined as $R(A):=\{a/b:a,b\in A,b\neq 0\}$. Using algebraic number theory in $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$, Garcia and Luca [‘Quotients of Fibonacci numbers’, Amer. Math. Monthly, to appear] proved that the quotient set of Fibonacci numbers is dense in the $p$-adic numbers $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ for all prime numbers $p$. For any integer $k\geq 2$, let $(F_{n}^{(k)})_{n\geq -(k-2)}$ be the sequence of $k$-generalised Fibonacci numbers, defined by the initial values $0,0,\ldots ,0,1$ ($k$ terms) and such that each successive term is the sum of the $k$ preceding terms. We use $p$-adic analysis to generalise the result of Garcia and Luca, by proving that the quotient set of $k$-generalised Fibonacci numbers is dense in $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ for any integer $k\geq 2$ and any prime number $p$.

M. Beiglböck, V. Bergelson, and A. Fish proved that if G is a countable amenable group and A and B are subsets of G with positive Banach density, then the product set AB is piecewise syndetic. This means that there is a finite subset E of G such that EAB is thick, that is, EAB contains translates of any finite subset of G. When G = ℤ, this was first proven by R. Jin. We prove a quantitative version of the aforementioned result by providing a lower bound on the density (with respect to a Følner sequence) of the set of witnesses to the thickness of EAB. When G = ℤd , this result was first proven by the current set of authors using completely different techniques.

We demonstrate that many properties of topological spaces connected with the notion of resolvability are preserved by the relation of similarity between topologies. Moreover, many of them can be characterised by the properties of the algebra of sets with nowhere dense boundary and the ideal of nowhere dense sets. We use these results to investigate whether a given pair of an algebra and an ideal is topological.

Erdős conjectured that for any set $A\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ with positive lower asymptotic density, there are infinite sets $B,\,C\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ such that $B\,+\,C\,\subseteq \,A$. We verify Erdős’ conjecture in the case where $A$ has Banach density exceeding $\frac{1}{2}$. As a consequence, we prove that, for $A\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ with positive Banach density (a much weaker assumption than positive lower density), we can find infinite $B,\,C\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ such that $B\,+\,C$ is contained in the union of $A$ and a translate of $A$. Both of the aforementioned results are generalized to arbitrary countable amenable groups. We also provide a positive solution to Erdős’ conjecture for subsets of the natural numbers that are pseudorandom.

Several measures for the density of sets of integers have been proposed, such as the asymptotic density, the Schnirelmann density, and the Dirichlet density. There has been some work in the literature on extending some of these concepts of density to higher dimensional sets of integers. In this work, we propose an extension of the Dirichlet density for sets of Gaussian integers and investigate some of its properties.

For a primitive root g modulo a prime p≥1 we obtain upper bounds on the gaps between the residues modulo p of the N consecutive powers agn, n=1,…,N, which is uniform over all integers a with gcd (a,p)=1.

In this paper we obtain quantitative results on the occurrence of consecutive large gaps between $B$-free numbers, and consecutive large gaps between nonzero Fourier coefficients of a class of newforms without complex multiplication.

A topology on $\mathbb{Z}$, which gives a nice proof that the set of prime integers is infinite, is characterised and examined. It is found to be homeomorphic to $\mathbb{Q}$, with a compact completion homeomorphic to the Cantor set. It has a natural place in a family of topologies on $\mathbb{Z}$, which includes the $p$-adics, and one in which the set of rational primes $\mathbb{P}$ is dense. Examples from number theory are given, including the primes and squares, Fermat numbers, Fibonacci numbers and $k$-free numbers.