Number Theory

The content of this talk is based on joint work with Shehzad Hathi. First, I will give a short but sweet proof of Mertens’ product theorem for number fields, which generalises a method introduced by Hardy. Next, when the number field is the rationals, we know that the error in this result changes sign infinitely often. Therefore, a natural question to consider is whether this is always the
case for any number field? I will answer this question (and more) during the talk. Furthermore, I will present the outcome of some computations in two number fields: $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$ and $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{13})$.

We prove an explicit Chebotarev variant of the Brun–Titchmarsh theorem. This leads to explicit versions of the best known unconditional upper bounds toward conjectures of Lang and Trotter for the coefficients of holomorphic cuspidal newforms. In particular, we prove that

$$
\lim_{x\to\infty} \frac{\left\{1\leq n \leq x : \tau (n) \neq 0 \right\}}{x} > 1 - 1.15\times 10^{-12}
$$

where $\tau(n)$ is Ramanujan’s tau-function. This is the first known positive unconditional lower bound for the proportion of positive integers n such that $\tau (n) \neq 0$. This is joint work with Daniel Hu and Alexander Shashkov.

As a refinement of Goldfeld’s conjecture, there is a conjecture of Keating–Snaith asserting that $\log L(1/2,E_d)$ for certain quadratic twists $E_d$ of an elliptic curve $E$ behaves like a normal random variable. In light of this, Radziwill and Soundararajan conjectured that the distribution of $\log(|Sha(E_d)|/\sqrt{|d|}$ is approximately Gaussian for these $E_d$, and proved that the conjectures of Keating–Snaith and theirs are both valid “from above”. More recently, under GRH, they further established a lower bound for the involving distribution towards Keating–Snaith’s conjecture. In this talk, we shall discuss the joint distribution of central values and orders of Sha groups of $E_d$ and how to adapt Radziwill–Soundararajan’s methods to study upper bound and lower bounds for such a joint distribution if time allows.

The partial sums of the Liouville function $\lambda(n)$ are "often" negative, and yet the partials sums of the Möbius function $\mu(n)$ are positive or negative "roughly equally". How can this, be, given that $\mu(n)$ and $\lambda(n)$ are so similar? I shall discuss some problems in this area, some joint work with Greg Martin and Mike Mossinghoff, and a possible application to zeta-zeroes.

The classical theory of hypergeometric functions, developed by generations of mathematicians including Gauss, Kummer, and Riemann, has been used substantially in the ensuing years within number theory, geometry, and the intersection thereof. In more recent decades, these classical ideas have been translated from the complex setting into the finite field and p
-adic settings as well.

In this talk, we will give a friendly introduction to hypergeometric functions, especially in the context of number theory.