We sharpen and generalize the dimension growth bounds for the number of points of bounded height lying on an irreducible algebraic variety of degree d, over any global field. In particular, we focus on the affine hypersurface situation by relaxing the condition on the top degree homogeneous part of the polynomial describing the affine hypersurface, while sharpening the dependence on the degree in the bounds compared to previous results. We formulate a conjecture about plane curves which provides a conjectural approach to the uniform degree $3$ case (the only remaining open case). For induction on dimension, we develop a higher-dimensional effective version of Hilbert’s irreducibility theorem, which is of independent interest.

Determining the polynomials $D \in {\mathbb Z}[x]$ such that the polynomial Pell equation ${P^2-DQ^2=1}$ has nontrivial solutions $P,Q$ in ${\mathbb Q}[x]$ (and in ${\mathbb Z}[x]$) is an open question. In this article, we consider the generalized polynomial Pell equation $P^2-DQ^2=n$, where $D \in {\mathbb Z}[x]$ is a monic quadratic polynomial and n is a nonzero integer. For $n=1$, such an equation always has nontrivial solutions in ${\mathbb Q}[x]$, but for a non-square integer n, the generalized polynomial Pell equation $P^2-DQ^2=n$ may not always have a solution in ${\mathbb Q}[x]$. Depending on n, we determine the polynomials $D=x^2+cx+d$, for which the equation $P^2-DQ^2=n$ has nontrivial solutions in ${\mathbb Q}[x]$ and in ${\mathbb Z}[x]$. Taking $n=-1$, this allows us to solve the negative polynomial Pell equation completely for any such D. An interesting feature is that there are certain polynomials D for which the generalized polynomial Pell equation has nontrivial solutions in ${\mathbb Z}[x]$, but only finitely many, whereas the solutions in ${\mathbb Q}[x]$ are infinitely many. Finally, we determine the monic quadratic polynomials D for which the solutions of $P^2-DQ^2=n$ in ${\mathbb Z}[x]$ exhibit this finiteness phenomenon.

We determine the density of integral binary forms of given degree that have squarefree discriminant, proving for the first time that the lower density is positive. Furthermore, we determine the density of integral binary forms that cut out maximal orders in number fields. The latter proves, in particular, an ‘arithmetic Bertini theorem’ conjectured by Poonen for ${\mathbb {P}}^1_{\mathbb {Z}}$.

Our methods also allow us to prove that there are $\gg X^{1/2+1/(n-1)}$ number fields of degree n having associated Galois group $S_n$ and absolute discriminant less than X, improving the best previously known lower bound of $\gg X^{1/2+1/n}$.

Finally, our methods correct an error in and thus resurrect earlier (retracted) results of Nakagawa on lower bounds for the number of totally unramified $A_n$-extensions of quadratic number fields of bounded discriminant.

Let f(x) and g(x) be polynomials in $\mathbb F_{2}[x]$ with ${\rm deg}\text{ } f=n$. It is shown that for $n\gg 1$, there is an $g_{1}(x)\in \mathbb F_{2}[x]$ with ${\rm deg}\text{ } g_{1}\leqslant \max\{{\rm deg}\text{ } g, 6.7\log n\}$ and $g(x)-g_{1}(x)$ having $ \lt 6.7\log n$ terms such that $\gcd(f(x), g_{1}(x))=1$. As an application, it is established using a result of Dubickas and Sha that given $f(x)\in \mathbb F_{2}[x]$ of degree $n\geqslant 1$, there is a separable $g(x)\in 2[x]$ with ${\rm deg}\text{ } g= {\rm deg}\text{ } f$ and satisfying that $f(x)-g(x)$ has $\leqslant 6.7\log n$ terms. As a simple consequence, the latter result holds in $\mathbb Z[x]$ after replacing ‘number of terms’ by the L1-norm of a polynomial and $6.7\log n$ by $6.8\log n$. This improves the bound $(\log n)^{\log 4 +\operatorname{\varepsilon}}$ obtained by Filaseta and Moy.

Niven’s theorem asserts that $\{\cos (r\pi ) \mid r\in \mathbb {Q}\}\cap \mathbb {Q}=\{0,\pm 1,\pm 1/2\}.$ In this paper, we use elementary techniques and results from arithmetic dynamics to obtain an algorithm for classifying all values in the set $\{\cos (r\pi ) \mid r\in \mathbb {Q}\}\cap K$, where K is an arbitrary number field.

Granville recently asked how the Mahler measure behaves in the context of polynomial dynamics. For a polynomial $f(z)=z^d+\cdots \in {\mathbb C}[z],\ \deg (f)\ge 2,$ we show that the Mahler measure of the iterates $f^n$ grows geometrically fast with the degree $d^n,$ and find the exact base of that exponential growth. This base is expressed via an integral of $\log ^+|z|$ with respect to the invariant measure of the Julia set for the polynomial $f.$ Moreover, we give sharp estimates for such an integral when the Julia set is connected.

By analogy with the trace of an algebraic integer $\alpha $ with conjugates $\alpha _1=\alpha , \ldots , \alpha _d$, we define the G-measure $ {\mathrm {G}} (\alpha )= \sum _{i=1}^d ( |\alpha _i| + 1/ | \alpha _i | )$ and the absolute ${\mathrm G}$-measure ${\mathrm {g}}(\alpha )={\mathrm {G}}(\alpha )/d$. We establish an analogue of the Schur–Siegel–Smyth trace problem for totally positive algebraic integers. Then we consider the case where $\alpha $ has all its conjugates in a sector $| \arg z | \leq \theta $, $0 < \theta < 90^{\circ }$. We compute the greatest lower bound $c(\theta )$ of the absolute G-measure of $\alpha $, for $\alpha $ belonging to $11$ consecutive subintervals of $]0, 90 [$. This phenomenon appears here for the first time, conforming to a conjecture of Rhin and Smyth on the nature of the function $c(\theta )$. All computations are done by the method of explicit auxiliary functions.

Let $\alpha $ be a totally positive algebraic integer of degree d, with conjugates $\alpha _1=\alpha , \alpha _2, \ldots , \alpha _d$. The absolute $S_k$-measure of $\alpha $ is defined by $s_k(\alpha )= d^{-1} \sum _{i=1}^{d}\alpha _i^k$. We compute the lower bounds $\upsilon _k$ of $s_k(\alpha )$ for each integer in the range $2\leq k \leq 15$ and give a conjecture on the results for integers $k>15$. Then we derive the lower bounds of $s_k(\alpha )$ for all real numbers $k>2$. Our computation is based on an improvement in the application of the LLL algorithm and analysis of the polynomials in the explicit auxiliary functions.

A finite set of integers A tiles the integers by translations if $\mathbb {Z}$ can be covered by pairwise disjoint translated copies of A. Restricting attention to one tiling period, we have $A\oplus B=\mathbb {Z}_M$ for some $M\in \mathbb {N}$ and $B\subset \mathbb {Z}$. This can also be stated in terms of cyclotomic divisibility of the mask polynomials $A(X)$ and $B(X)$ associated with A and B.

In this article, we introduce a new approach to a systematic study of such tilings. Our main new tools are the box product, multiscale cuboids and saturating sets, developed through a combination of harmonic-analytic and combinatorial methods. We provide new criteria for tiling and cyclotomic divisibility in terms of these concepts. As an application, we can determine whether a set A containing certain configurations can tile a cyclic group $\mathbb {Z}_M$, or recover a tiling set based on partial information about it. We also develop tiling reductions where a given tiling can be replaced by one or more tilings with a simpler structure. The tools introduced here are crucial in our proof in [24] that all tilings of period $(pqr)^2$, where $p,q,r$ are distinct odd primes, satisfy a tiling condition proposed by Coven and Meyerowitz [2].

In this paper, we prove the assertion that the number of monic cubic polynomials $F(x) = x^3 + a_2 x^2 + a_1 x + a_0$ with integer coefficients and irreducible, Galois over ${\mathbb {Q}}$ satisfying $\max \{|a_2|, |a_1|, |a_0|\} \leq X$ is bounded from above by $O(X (\log X)^2)$. We also count the number of abelian monic binary cubic forms with integer coefficients up to a natural equivalence relation ordered by the so-called Bhargava–Shankar height. Finally, we prove an assertion characterizing the splitting field of 2-torsion points of semi-stable abelian elliptic curves.

We obtain an effective analytic formula, with explicit constants, for the number of distinct irreducible factors of a polynomial $f \in \mathbb {Z}[x]$. We use an explicit version of Mertens’ theorem for number fields to estimate a related sum over rational primes. For a given $f \in \mathbb {Z}[x]$, our result yields a finite list of primes that certifies the number of distinct irreducible factors of f.

Girstmair [‘On an irreducibility criterion of M. Ram Murty’, Amer. Math. Monthly 112(3) (2005), 269–270] gave a generalisation of Ram Murty’s irreducibility criterion. We further generalise these criteria.

We study a class of two-variable polynomials called exact polynomials which contains $A$-polynomials of knot complements. The Mahler measure of these polynomials can be computed in terms of a volume function defined on the vanishing set of the polynomial. We prove that the local extrema of the volume function are on the two-dimensional torus and give a closed formula for the Mahler measure in terms of these extremal values. This formula shows that the Mahler measure of an irreducible and exact polynomial divided by $\pi$ is greater than the amplitude of the volume function. We also prove a K-theoretic criterion for a polynomial to be a factor of an $A$-polynomial and give a topological interpretation of its Mahler measure.

We study intersections of orbits in polynomial semigroup dynamics with lines on the affine plane over a number field, extending previous work of D. Ghioca, T. Tucker, and M. Zieve (2008).

We prove that for every sufficiently large integer $n$, the polynomial $1+x+x^{2}/11+x^{3}/111+\cdots +x^{n}/111\ldots 1$ is irreducible over the rationals, where the coefficient of $x^{k}$ for $1\leqslant k\leqslant n$ is the reciprocal of the decimal number consisting of $k$ digits which are each $1$. Similar results following from the same techniques are discussed.

For a finite field of odd cardinality $q$ , we show that the sequence of iterates of $aX^{2}+c$ , starting at $0$ , always recurs after $O(q/\text{log}\log q)$ steps. For $X^{2}+1$ , the same is true for any starting value. We suggest that the traditional “birthday paradox” model is inappropriate for iterates of $X^{3}+c$ , when $q$ is 2 mod 3.

In this paper we give an extension of the results of the generalized waiting time problem given by El-Desouky and Hussen (1990). An urn contains m types of balls of unequal numbers, and balls are drawn with replacement until first duplication. In the case of finite memory of order k, let ni be the number of type i, i = 1, 2, …, m. The probability of success pi = ni/N, i = 1, 2, …, m, where ni is a positive integer and Let Ym,k be the number of drawings required until first duplication. We obtain some new expressions of the probability function, in terms of Stirling numbers, symmetric polynomials, and generalized harmonic numbers. Moreover, some special cases are investigated. Finally, some important new combinatorial identities are obtained.

We investigate the numbers of complex zeros of Littlewood polynomials $p\left( z \right)$ (polynomialswith coefficients {−1, 1}) inside or on the unit circle $\left| z \right|\,=\,1$ , denoted by $N\left( p \right)$ and $U\left( p \right)$ , respectively. Two types of Littlewood polynomials are considered: Littlewood polynomials with one sign change inthe sequence of coefficients and Littlewood polynomials with one negative coefficient. We obtainexplicit formulas for $N\left( p \right)$ , $U\left( p \right)$ for polynomials $p\left( z \right)$ of these types. We show that if $n\,+\,1$ is a prime number, then for each integer $k,\,0\,⩽\,k\,⩽\,n-1$ , there exists a Littlewood polynomial $p\left( z \right)$ of degree $n$ with $N\left( p \right)\,=\,k$ and $U\left( p \right)\,=\,0$ . Furthermore, we describe some cases where the ratios $N\left( p \right)/n$ and $U\left( p \right)/n$ have limits as $n\,\to \,\infty $ and find the corresponding limit values.

We give a short and elementary proof of an inverse Bernstein-type inequality found by S. Khrushchev for the derivative of a polynomial having all its zeros on the unit circle. The inequality is used to show that equally-spaced points solve a min–max–min problem for the logarithmic potential of such polynomials. Using techniques recently developed for polarization (Chebyshev-type) problems, we show that this optimality also holds for a large class of potentials, including the Riesz potentials $1/r^{s}$ with $s>0.$

We prove a necessary and sufficient condition on the list of nonzero integers ${{u}_{1}},...,{{u}_{k}}$ , $k\,\ge \,2$ , under which a monic polynomial $f\,\in \,\mathbb{Z}\left| x \right|$ is expressible by a linear form ${{u}_{1}}\,{{f}_{1}}\,+\,\cdot \cdot \cdot \,+\,{{u}_{k}}\,{{f}_{k}}$ in monic polynomials ${{f}_{1}},...,\,{{f}_{k}}\,\in \,\mathbb{Z}\left| x \right|$ . This condition is independent of $f$ . We also show that if this condition holds, then the monic polynomials ${{f}_{1}},...,\,{{f}_{k}}$ can be chosen to be irreducible in $\mathbb{Z}\left[ x \right]$ .