We study the number of ways of factoring elements in the complex reflection groups $G(r,s,n)$ as products of reflections. We prove a result that compares factorization numbers in $G(r,s,n)$ to those in the symmetric group $S_n$ , and we use this comparison, along with the Ekedahl, Lando, Shapiro, and Vainshtein (ELSV) formula, to deduce a polynomial structure for factorizations in $G(r,s,n)$ .

We enumerate factorizations of a Coxeter element in a well-generated complex reflection group into arbitrary factors, keeping track of the fixed space dimension of each factor. In the infinite families of generalized permutations, our approach is fully combinatorial. It gives results analogous to those of Jackson in the symmetric group and can be refined to encode a notion of cycle type. As one application of our results, we give a previously overlooked characterization of the poset of W-noncrossing partitions.

The main objects of study in this article are two classes of Rankin–Selberg L-functions, namely L(s,f×g) and L(s, sym2(g)× sym2(g)), where f,g are newforms, holomorphic or of Maass type, on the upper half plane, and sym2(g) denotes the symmetric square lift of g to GL(3). We prove that in general, i.e., when these L-functions are not divisible by L-functions of quadratic characters (such divisibility happening rarely), they do not admit any LandauSiegel zeros. Such zeros, which are real and close to s=1, are highly mysterious and are not expected to occur. There are corollaries of our result, one of them being a strong lower bound for special value at s=1, which is of interest both geometrically and analytically. One also gets this way a good bound on the norm of sym2(g).

We study a single-server queue in which the server takes a vacation whenever the system becomes empty. The service and vacation times and the arrival process are all assumed to be mutually independent. The successive service times and the vacation times each form independent, identically distributed sequences with general distributions. A new class of non-renewal arrival processes is introduced. As special cases, it includes the Markov-modulated Poisson process and the superposition of phase-type renewal processes.

Algorithmically tractable equations for the distributions of the waiting times at an arbitrary time and at arrivals, as well as for the queue length at an arbitrary time, at arrivals, and at departures are established. Some factorizations, which are known for the case of renewal input, are generalized to this new framework and new factorizations are obtained. The algorithmic implementation of these results is discussed.