We prove a difference analogue of the celebrated Tumura–Hayman–Clunie theorem. Let f be a transcendental entire function, let c be a nonzero constant and let n be a positive integer. If f and $\Delta _c^n f$ omit zero in the whole complex plane, then either $f(z)=\exp (h_1(z)+C_1 z)$, where $h_1$ is an entire function of period c and $\exp (C_1 c)\neq 1$, or $f(z)=\exp (h_2(z)+C_2 z)$, where $h_2$ is an entire function of period $2c$ and $C_2$ satisfies

$$ \begin{align*} \bigg(\frac{1+\exp(C_2c)}{1-\exp(C_2 c)}\bigg)^{2n}=1. \end{align*} $$

We characterize zero sets for which every subset remains a zero set too in the Fock space $\mathcal {F}^p$ , $1\leq p<\infty $ . We are also interested in the study of a stability problem for some examples of uniqueness set with zero excess in Fock spaces.

A classical theorem of Frei states that if $A_p$ is the last transcendental function in the sequence $A_0,\ldots ,A_{n-1}$ of entire functions, then each solution base of the differential equation $f^{(n)}+A_{n-1}f^{(n-1)}+\cdots +A_{1}f'+A_{0}f=0$ contains at least $n-p$ entire functions of infinite order. Here, the transcendental coefficient $A_p$ dominates the growth of the polynomial coefficients $A_{p+1},\ldots ,A_{n-1}$ . By expressing the dominance of $A_p$ in different ways and allowing the coefficients $A_{p+1},\ldots ,A_{n-1}$ to be transcendental, we show that the conclusion of Frei’s theorem still holds along with an additional estimation on the asymptotic lower bound for the growth of solutions. At times, these new refined results give a larger number of linearly independent solutions of infinite order than the original theorem of Frei. For such solutions, we show that $0$ is the only possible finite deficient value. Previously, this property has been known to hold for so-called admissible solutions and is commonly cited as Wittich’s theorem. Analogous results are discussed for linear differential equations in the unit disc, as well as for complex difference and complex q-difference equations.

The Fermat type functional equations $(*)\, f_1^n+f_2^n+\cdots +f_k^n=1$, where n and k are positive integers, are considered in the complex plane. Our focus is on equations of the form (*) where it is not known whether there exist non-constant solutions in one or more of the following four classes of functions: meromorphic functions, rational functions, entire functions, polynomials. For such equations, we obtain estimates on Nevanlinna functions that transcendental solutions of (*) would have to satisfy, as well as analogous estimates for non-constant rational solutions. As an application, it is shown that transcendental entire solutions of (*) when n = k(k − 1) with k ≥ 3, would have to satisfy a certain differential equation, which is a generalization of the known result when k = 3. Alternative proofs for the known non-existence theorems for entire and polynomial solutions of (*) are given. Moreover, some restrictions on degrees of polynomial solutions are discussed.

According to a conjecture by Yang, if $f(z)f^{(k)}(z)$ is a periodic function, where $f(z)$ is a transcendental entire function and $k$ is a positive integer, then $f(z)$ is also a periodic function. We propose related questions, which can be viewed as difference or differential-difference versions of Yang’s conjecture. We consider the periodicity of a transcendental entire function $f(z)$ when differential, difference or differential-difference polynomials in $f(z)$ are periodic. For instance, we show that if $f(z)^{n}f(z+\unicode[STIX]{x1D702})$ is a periodic function with period $c$, then $f(z)$ is also a periodic function with period $(n+1)c$, where $f(z)$ is a transcendental entire function of hyper-order $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{2}(f)<1$ and $n\geq 2$ is an integer.

We will describe the Ziegler spectrum over the ring of entire complex valued functions.

Let $\{\mathbf{F}(n)\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ and $\{\mathbf{G}(n)\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ be linear recurrence sequences. It is a well-known Diophantine problem to determine the finiteness of the set ${\mathcal{N}}$ of natural numbers such that their ratio $\mathbf{F}(n)/\mathbf{G}(n)$ is an integer. In this paper we study an analogue of such a divisibility problem in the complex situation. Namely, we are concerned with the divisibility problem (in the sense of complex entire functions) for two sequences $F(n)=a_{0}+a_{1}f_{1}^{n}+\cdots +a_{l}f_{l}^{n}$ and $G(n)=b_{0}+b_{1}g_{1}^{n}+\cdots +b_{m}g_{m}^{n}$, where the $f_{i}$ and $g_{j}$ are nonconstant entire functions and the $a_{i}$ and $b_{j}$ are non-zero constants except that $a_{0}$ can be zero. We will show that the set ${\mathcal{N}}$ of natural numbers such that $F(n)/G(n)$ is an entire function is finite under the assumption that $f_{1}^{i_{1}}\cdots f_{l}^{i_{l}}g_{1}^{j_{1}}\cdots g_{m}^{j_{m}}$ is not constant for any non-trivial index set $(i_{1},\ldots ,i_{l},j_{1},\ldots ,j_{m})\in \mathbb{Z}^{l+m}$.

Collections of functions forming a partition of unity play an important role in analysis. In this paper we characterise for any $N\in \mathbb{N}$ the entire functions $P$ for which the partition of unity condition $\sum _{\mathbf{n}\in \mathbb{Z}^{d}}P(\mathbf{x}+\mathbf{n})\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{[0,N]^{d}}(\mathbf{x}+\mathbf{n})=1$ holds for all $\mathbf{x}\in \mathbb{R}^{d}.$ The general characterisation leads to various easy ways of constructing such entire functions as well. We demonstrate the flexibility of the approach by showing that additional properties like continuity or differentiability of the functions $(P\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}_{[0,N]^{d}})(\cdot +\mathbf{n})$ can be controlled. In particular, this leads to easy ways of constructing entire functions $P$ such that the functions in the partition of unity belong to the Feichtinger algebra.

In this paper we study Hankel transforms and Hankel convolution operators on spaces of entire functions of finite order and their duals.

We examine what can be said about a polynomial p and an entire function f given that p o f is an even, or an odd, function.

We generalise the classical Bernstein's inequality: . Moreover we obtain a new representation formula for entire functions of exponential type.