In this paper, we study the stability of the ring solution of the N-body problem in the entire sphere $\mathbb {S}^2$ by using the logarithmic potential proposed in Boatto et al. (2016, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 472, 20160020) and Dritschel (2019, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 377, 20180349), derived through a definition of central force and Hodge decomposition theorem for 1-forms in manifolds. First, we characterize the ring solution and study its spectral stability, obtaining regions (spherical caps) where the ring solution is spectrally stable for $2\leq N\leq 6$, while, for $N\geq 7$, the ring is spectrally unstable. The nonlinear stability is studied by reducing the system to the homographic regular polygonal solutions, obtaining a 2-d.o.f. Hamiltonian system, and therefore some classic results on stability for 2-d.o.f. Hamiltonian systems are applied to prove that the ring solution is unstable at any parallel where it is placed. Additionally, this system can be reduced to 1-d.o.f. by using the angular momentum integral, which enables us to describe the phase portraits and use them to find periodic ring solutions to the full system. Some of those solutions are numerically approximated.

We present the geometry behind counting twin prime polynomials in $\mathbb{F}_{q}[T]$ in general. We compute cohomology and explicitly count points by means of a twisted Lefschetz trace formula applied to these parametrizing varieties for cubic twin prime polynomials. The elliptic curve $X^{3}=Y(Y-1)$ occurs in the geometry, and thus counting cubic twin prime polynomials involves the associated modular form. In theory, this approach can be extended to higher degree twin primes, but the computations become harder.

The formula we get in degree 3 is compatible with the Hardy–Littlewood heuristic on average, agrees with the prediction for $q\equiv 2$ (mod 3), but shows anomalies for $q\equiv 1$ (mod 3).

We prove a function field analogue of Maynard’s celebrated result about primes with restricted digits. That is, for certain ranges of parameters $n$ and $q$, we prove an asymptotic formula for the number of irreducible polynomials of degree $n$ over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ whose coefficients are restricted to lie in a given subset of $\mathbb{F}_{q}$.

Let ${{\mathbf{F}}_{q}}[T]$ be the ring of polynomials over the finite field of $q$ elements and $Y$ a large integer. We say a polynomial in ${{\mathbf{F}}_{q}}[T]$ is $Y$-smooth if all of its irreducible factors are of degree at most $Y$. We show that a ternary additive equation $a\,+\,b\,=\,c$ over $Y$-smooth polynomials has many solutions. As an application, if $S$ is the set of first $s$ primes in ${{\mathbf{F}}_{q}}[T]$ and $s$ is large, we prove that the $S$-unit equation $u\,+\,v\,=\,1$ has at least $\text{exp}\left( {{s}^{1/6-\in }}\,\text{log}\,\text{q} \right)$ solutions.

The problem of solving polynomial equations over finite fields has many applications in cryptography and coding theory. In this paper, we consider polynomial equations over a ‘large’ finite field with a ‘small’ characteristic. We introduce a new algorithm for solving this type of equations, called the successive resultants algorithm (SRA). SRA is radically different from previous algorithms for this problem, yet it is conceptually simple. A straightforward implementation using Magma was able to beat the built-in Roots function for some parameters. These preliminary results encourage a more detailed study of SRA and its applications. Moreover, we point out that an extension of SRA to the multivariate case would have an important impact on the practical security of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem in the small characteristic case.

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

Let $E$ be an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ that has good supersingular reduction at $p\,>\,3$. We construct what we call the $\pm /\pm $-Selmer groups of $E$ over the $\mathbb{Z}_{p}^{2}$-extension of an imaginary quadratic field $K$ when the prime $p$ splits completely over $K/\mathbb{Q}$, and prove that they enjoy a property analogous to Mazur's control theorem.

Furthermore, we propose a conjectural connection between the $\pm /\pm $-Selmer groups and Loeffler's two-variable $\pm /\pm $-$p$-adic $L$-functions of elliptic curves.

Given $f(x,y)\in \mathbb Z[x,y]$ with no common components with $x^a-y^b$ and $x^ay^b-1$, we prove that for $p$ sufficiently large, with $C(f)$ exceptions, the solutions $(x,y)\in \overline {\mathbb F}_p\times \overline {\mathbb F}_p$ of $f(x,y)=0$ satisfy $ {\rm ord}(x)+{\rm ord}(y)\gt c (\log p/\log \log p)^{1/2},$ where $c$ is a constant and ${\rm ord}(r)$ is the order of $r$ in the multiplicative group $\overline {\mathbb F}_p^*$. Moreover, for most $p\lt N$, $N$ being a large number, we prove that, with $C(f)$ exceptions, ${\rm ord}(x)+{\rm ord}(y)\gt p^{1/4+\epsilon (p)},$ where $\epsilon (p)$ is an arbitrary function tending to $0$ when $p$ goes to $\infty $.

Let k be a finite field with q elements and characteristic coprime with 6. Our main result is: Every polynomial P ∈ k[T] is a strict sum of three cubes and two squares.

With the help of some $p$-adic formal series over $p$-adic number fields and the estimates of character sums over Galois rings, we prove that there is a constant $C(n)$ such that there exists a primitive polynomial $f(x)\,{=}\,x^{n}-a_{1}x^{n-1}+\cdots +(-1)^{n}a_{n}$ of degree $n$ over $F_{q}$ with the first $m=\lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\rfloor$ coefficients $a_{1},\ldots ,a_{m}$ prescribed in advance if $q\,{>}\,C(n)$.