In this note, we provide refined estimates of two sums involving the Euler totient function,

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{n\leq x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}\biggl(\biggl[\frac{x}{n}\biggr]\biggr)\quad \text{and}\quad \mathop{\sum }_{n\leq x}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}([x/n])}{[x/n]},\end{eqnarray}$$

$[x]$

$x$

Let $n$ be a positive integer. We obtain new Menon’s identities by using the actions of some subgroups of $(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^{\times }$ on the set $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. In particular, let $p$ be an odd prime and let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ be a positive integer. If $H_{k}$ is a subgroup of $(\mathbb{Z}/p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}\mathbb{Z})^{\times }$ with index $k=p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}u$ such that $0\leqslant \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and $u\mid p-1$, then

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{x\in H_{k}}(x-1,p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}})=\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}})}{k}\bigg(1+k(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD})+u\frac{p^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}-1}{p-1}\bigg),\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(n)$

Lapkova [‘On the average number of divisors of reducible quadratic polynomials’, J. Number Theory 180 (2017), 710–729] uses a Tauberian theorem to derive an asymptotic formula for the divisor sum $\sum _{n\leq x}d(n(n+v))$ where $v$ is a fixed integer and $d(n)$ denotes the number of divisors of $n$. We reprove this result with additional terms in the asymptotic formula, by investigating the relationship between this divisor sum and the well-known sum $\sum _{n\leq x}d(n)d(n+v)$.

Let $h(n)$ denote the largest product of distinct primes whose sum does not exceed $n$. The main result of this paper is that the property for all $n\geq 1$, we have $\log h(n)<\sqrt{\text{li}^{-1}(n)}$ (where $\text{li}^{-1}$ denotes the inverse function of the logarithmic integral) is equivalent to the Riemann hypothesis.

Robin’s criterion states that the Riemann hypothesis is true if and only if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}(n)<e^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}}n\log \log n$ for every positive integer $n\geq 5041$. In this paper we establish a new unconditional upper bound for the sum of divisors function, which improves the current best unconditional estimate given by Robin. For this purpose, we use a precise approximation for Chebyshev’s $\unicode[STIX]{x1D717}$-function.

We investigate the monotonic characteristics of the generalised binomial coefficients (phinomials) based upon Euler’s totient function. We show, unconditionally, that the set of integers for which this sequence is unimodal is finite and, assuming the generalised Riemann hypothesis, we find all the exceptions.

For a positive integer $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}n$, let $\sigma (n)$ denote the sum of the positive divisors of $n$. Let $d$ be a proper divisor of $n$. We call $n$ a deficient-perfect number if $\sigma (n) = 2n - d$. In this paper, we show that there are no odd deficient-perfect numbers with three distinct prime divisors.

In this paper, we prove that, if $N$ is a positive odd number with $r$ distinct prime factors such that $N\mid \sigma (N)$, then $N\lt {2}^{{4}^{r} - {2}^{r} } $ and $N{\mathop{\prod }\nolimits}_{p\mid N} p\lt {2}^{{4}^{r} } $, where $\sigma (N)$ is the sum of all positive divisors of $N$. In particular, these bounds hold if $N$ is an odd perfect number.

The main result in the earlier paper (by the first author) is improved as follows. The number of odd multiperfect numbers with at most $r$ distinct prime factors is bounded by ${4}^{{r}^{2} } / {2}^{r+ 2} (r- 1)!$.

Recently, Pollack and Shevelev [‘On perfect and near-perfect numbers’, J. Number Theory 132 (2012), 3037–3046] introduced the concept of near-perfect numbers. A positive integer $n$ is called near-perfect if it is the sum of all but one of its proper divisors. In this paper, we determine all near-perfect numbers with two distinct prime factors.

Two arithmetic functions $f$ and $g$ form a Möbius pair if $f(n)= {\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{d\mid n} g(d)$ for all natural numbers $n$. In that case, $g$ can be expressed in terms of $f$ by the familiar Möbius inversion formula of elementary number theory. In a previous paper, the first-named author showed that if the members $f$ and $g$ of a Möbius pair are both finitely supported, then both functions vanish identically. Here we prove two significantly stronger versions of this uncertainty principle. A corollary is that in a nonzero Möbius pair, one cannot have both ${\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{f(n)\not = 0} 1/ n\lt \infty $ and ${\mathop{\sum }\nolimits}_{g(n)\not = 0} 1/ n\lt \infty $.

We study positive integers $n$ such that $n\phi (n)\equiv 2\hspace{0.167em} {\rm mod}\hspace{0.167em} \sigma (n)$, where $\phi (n)$ and $\sigma (n)$ are the Euler function and the sum of divisors function of the positive integer $n$, respectively. We give a general ineffective result showing that there are only finitely many such $n$ whose prime factors belong to a fixed finite set. When this finite set consists only of the two primes $2$ and $3$ we use continued fractions to find all such positive integers $n$.

Let k≥2 be an integer. A natural number n is called k-perfect if σ(n)=kn. For any integer r≥1, we prove that the number of odd k-perfect numbers with at most r distinct prime factors is bounded by (k−1)4r3.

Let 〈𝒫〉⊂N be a multiplicative subsemigroup of the natural numbers N={1,2,3,…} generated by an arbitrary set 𝒫 of primes (finite or infinite). We give an elementary proof that the partial sums ∑ n∈〈𝒫〉:n≤x(μ(n))/n are bounded in magnitude by 1. With the aid of the prime number theorem, we also show that these sums converge to ∏ p∈𝒫(1−(1/p)) (the case where 𝒫 is all the primes is a well-known observation of Landau). Interestingly, this convergence holds even in the presence of nontrivial zeros and poles of the associated zeta function ζ𝒫(s)≔∏ p∈𝒫(1−(1/ps))−1 on the line {Re(s)=1}. As equivalent forms of the first inequality, we have ∣∑ n≤x:(n,P)=1(μ(n))/n∣≤1, ∣∑ n∣N:n≤x(μ(n))/n∣≤1, and ∣∑ n≤x(μ(mn))/n∣≤1 for all m,x,N,P≥1.

Let $\varphi(\cdot)$ be the Euler function and let $\sigma(\cdot)$ be the sum-of-divisors function. In this note, we bound the number of positive integers $n\le x$ with the property that $s(n)=\sigma(n)-n$ divides $\varphi(n)$.

In this paper we show that if f (X) ∈; Z [X ] is a nonzero polynomial, then ω(n)/f(n) holds only on a set of n of asymptotic density zero, where for a positive integer n the number ω(n) counts the number of distinct prime factors ofn.