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.

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 $.

Let Mn and Tn denote the nth Motzkin number and the nth central trinomial coefficient respectively. We prove that for any prime $p\ge 5$,

\begin{equation*}\begin{aligned}\\[-22pt]&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}M_k^2\equiv \left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\left(2-6p\right)\pmod{p^2},\\&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}kM_k^2\equiv \left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\left(9p-1\right)\pmod{p^2},\\&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}T_kM_k\equiv \frac{4}{3}\left(\frac{p}{3}\right)+\frac{p}{6}\left(1-9\left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\right)\pmod{p^2},\\[-6pt]\end{aligned}\end{equation*}

where $\left(-\right)$ is the Legendre symbol. These results confirm three supercongruences conjectured by Z.-W. Sun in 2010.

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 $m,\,r\in {\mathbb {Z}}$ and $\omega \in {\mathbb {R}}$ satisfy $0\leqslant r\leqslant m$ and $\omega \geqslant 1$. Our main result is a generalized continued fraction for an expression involving the partial binomial sum $s_m(r) = \sum _{i=0}^r\binom{m}{i}$. We apply this to create new upper and lower bounds for $s_m(r)$ and thus for $g_{\omega,m}(r)=\omega ^{-r}s_m(r)$. We also bound an integer $r_0 \in \{0,\,1,\,\ldots,\,m\}$ such that $g_{\omega,m}(0)<\cdots < g_{\omega,m}(r_0-1)\leqslant g_{\omega,m}(r_0)$ and $g_{\omega,m}(r_0)>\cdots >g_{\omega,m}(m)$. For real $\omega \geqslant \sqrt 3$ we prove that $r_0\in \{\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor,\,\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor +1\}$, and also $r_0 =\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor$ for $\omega \in \{3,\,4,\,\ldots \}$ or $\omega =2$ and $3\nmid m$.

Liu [‘Supercongruences for truncated Appell series’, Colloq. Math. 158(2) (2019), 255–263] and Lin and Liu [‘Congruences for the truncated Appell series $F_3$ and $F_4$’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 31(1) (2020), 10–17] confirmed four supercongruences for truncated Appell series. Motivated by their work, we give a new supercongruence for the truncated Appell series $F_{1}$, together with two generalisations of this supercongruence, by establishing its q-analogues.

We prove the following conjecture of Z.-W. Sun [‘On congruences related to central binomial coefficients’, J. Number Theory 13(11) (2011), 2219–2238]. Let p be an odd prime. Then

$$ \begin{align*} \sum_{k=1}^{p-1}\frac{\binom{2k}k}{k2^k}\equiv-\frac12H_{{(p-1)}/2}+\frac7{16}p^2B_{p-3}\pmod{p^3}, \end{align*} $$

where $H_n$ is the nth harmonic number and $B_n$ is the nth Bernoulli number. In addition, we evaluate $\sum _{k=0}^{p-1}(ak+b)\binom {2k}k/2^k$ modulo $p^3$ for any p-adic integers $a, b$.

In this paper, we mainly prove the following conjectures of Sun [16]: Let p > 3 be a prime. Then

\begin{align*}&A_{2p}\equiv A_2-\frac{1648}3p^3B_{p-3}\ ({\rm{mod}}\ p^4),\\&A_{2p-1}\equiv A_1+\frac{16p^3}3B_{p-3}\ ({\rm{mod}}\ p^4),\\&A_{3p}\equiv A_3-36738p^3B_{p-3}\ ({\rm{mod}}\ p^4),\end{align*}

where $A_n=\sum_{k=0}^n\binom{n}k^2\binom{n+k}{k}^2$ is the nth Apéry number, and Bn is the nth Bernoulli number.

In recent years, mock theta functions in the modern sense have received great attention to seek examples of q-hypergeometric series and find their alternative representations. In this paper, we discover some new mock theta functions and express them in terms of Hecke-type double sums based on some basic hypergeometric series identities given by Z.G. Liu.

By examining two hypergeometric series transformations, we establish several remarkable infinite series identities involving harmonic numbers and quintic central binomial coefficients, including five conjectured recently by Z.-W. Sun [‘Series with summands involving harmonic numbers’, Preprint, 2023, arXiv:2210.07238v7]. This is realised by ‘the coefficient extraction method’ implemented by Mathematica commands.

The integrality of the numbers $A_{n,m}={(2n)!(2m)!}/{n!m!(n+m)!}$ was observed by Catalan as early as 1874 and Gessel named $A_{n,m}$ the super Catalan numbers. The positivity of the q-super Catalan numbers (q-analogue of the super Catalan numbers) was investigated by Warnaar and Zudilin [‘A q-rious positivity’, Aequationes Math. 81 (2011), 177–183]. We prove the divisibility of sums of q-super Catalan numbers, which establishes a q-analogue of Apagodu’s congruence involving super Catalan numbers.

We derive a q-supercongruence modulo the third power of a cyclotomic polynomial with the help of Guo and Zudilin’s method of creative microscoping [‘A q-microscope for supercongruences’, Adv. Math. 346 (2019), 329–358] and the q-Dixon formula. As consequences, we give several supercongruences including

$$ \begin{align*}\sum_{k=0}^{(p-2)/3}\frac{(\frac{2}{3})_k^3}{(1)_k^3}\equiv\frac{p}{2}\frac{(1)_{(p-2)/3}}{(\frac{4}{3})_{(p-2)/3}}\pmod{p^3},\end{align*} $$

where p is a prime with $p\equiv 5\pmod {6}$ .

Recently, Lin and Liu [‘Congruences for the truncated Appell series $F_3$ and $F_4$ ’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 31(1) (2020), 10–17] confirmed a supercongruence on the truncated Appell series $F_3$ . Motivated by their work, we give a generalisation of this supercongruence by establishing a q-supercongruence modulo the fourth power of a cyclotomic polynomial.

Let n and k be positive integers with $n\ge k+1$ and let $\{a_i\}_{i=1}^n$ be a strictly increasing sequence of positive integers. Let $S_{n, k}:=\sum _{i=1}^{n-k} {1}/{\mathrm {lcm}(a_{i},a_{i+k})}$ . In 1978, Borwein [‘A sum of reciprocals of least common multiples’, Canad. Math. Bull. 20 (1978), 117–118] confirmed a conjecture of Erdős by showing that $S_{n,1}\le 1-{1}/{2^{n-1}}$ . Hong [‘A sharp upper bound for the sum of reciprocals of least common multiples’, Acta Math. Hungar. 160 (2020), 360–375] improved Borwein’s upper bound to $S_{n,1}\le {a_{1}}^{-1}(1-{1}/{2^{n-1}})$ and derived optimal upper bounds for $S_{n,2}$ and $S_{n,3}$ . In this paper, we present a sharp upper bound for $S_{n,4}$ and characterise the sequences $\{a_i\}_{i=1}^n$ for which the upper bound is attained.

We give a new q-analogue of the (A.2) supercongruence of Van Hamme. Our proof employs Andrews’ multiseries generalisation of Watson’s $_{8}\phi _{7}$ transformation, Andrews’ terminating q-analogue of Watson’s $_{3}F_{2}$ summation, a q-Watson-type summation due to Wei–Gong–Li and the creative microscoping method, developed by the author and Zudilin [‘A q-microscope for supercongruences’, Adv. Math. 346 (2019), 329–358]. As a conclusion, we confirm a weaker form of Conjecture 4.5 by the author [‘Some generalizations of a supercongruence of van Hamme’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 28 (2017), 888–899].

Swisher [‘On the supercongruence conjectures of van Hamme’, Res. Math. Sci. 2 (2015), Article no. 18] and He [‘Supercongruences on truncated hypergeometric series’, Results Math. 72 (2017), 303–317] independently proved that Van Hamme’s (G.2) supercongruence holds modulo $p^4$ for any prime $p\equiv 1\pmod {4}$ . Swisher also obtained an extension of Van Hamme’s (G.2) supercongruence for $p\equiv 3 \pmod 4$ and $p>3$ . In this note, we give new one-parameter generalisations of Van Hamme’s (G.2) supercongruence modulo $p^3$ for any odd prime p. Our proof uses the method of ‘creative microscoping’ introduced by Guo and Zudilin [‘A q-microscope for supercongruences’, Adv. Math. 346 (2019), 329–358].

By combining the generating function approach with the Lagrange expansion formula, we evaluate, in closed form, two multiple alternating sums of binomial coefficients, which can be regarded as alternating counterparts of the circular sum evaluation discovered by Carlitz [‘The characteristic polynomial of a certain matrix of binomial coefficients’, Fibonacci Quart. 3(2) (1965), 81–89].

We show that the $Kn$ –smooth part of $a^n-1$ for an integer $a>1$ is $a^{o(n)}$ for most positive integers n.

We investigate, for given positive integers a and b, the least positive integer $c=c(a,b)$ such that the quotient $\varphi (c!\kern-1.2pt)/\varphi (a!\kern-1.2pt)\varphi (b!\kern-1.2pt)$ is an integer. We derive results on the limit of $c(a,b)/(a+b)$ as a and b tend to infinity and show that $c(a,b)>a+b$ for all pairs of positive integers $(a,b)$ , with the exception of a set of density zero.

We establish a family of q-supercongruences modulo the cube of a cyclotomic polynomial for truncated basic hypergeometric series. This confirms a weaker form of a conjecture of the present authors. Our proof employs a very-well-poised Karlsson–Minton type summation due to Gasper, together with the ‘creative microscoping’ method introduced by the first author in recent joint work with Zudilin.