Our work owes its origin to a recent note of Ram Murty [‘Irrationality of zeros of the digamma function’, Number Theory in Memory of Eduard Wirsing (eds. H. Maier, R. Steuding and J. Steuding) (Springer, Cham, 2023), 237–243], in which he proves that all the zeros of the digamma function are irrational with at most one possible exception. We extend this investigation to higher-order polygamma functions.

We establish new results on complex and $p$-adic linear independence on a class of semiabelian varieties. As applications, we obtain transcendence results concerning complex and $p$-adic Weierstrass sigma functions associated with elliptic curves.

The Thue–Morse sequence $\{t(n)\}_{n\geqslant 0}$ is the indicator function of the parity of the number of ones in the binary expansion of nonnegative integers n, where $t(n)=1$ (resp. $=0$) if the binary expansion of n has an odd (resp. even) number of ones. In this paper, we generalize a recent result of E. Miyanohara by showing that, for a fixed Pisot or Salem number $\beta>\sqrt {\varphi }=1.272019\ldots $, the set of the numbers

$$\begin{align*}1,\quad \sum_{n\geqslant1}\frac{t(n)}{\beta^{n}},\quad \sum_{n\geqslant1}\frac{t(n^2)}{\beta^{n}},\quad \dots, \quad \sum_{n\geqslant1}\frac{t(n^k)}{\beta^{n}},\quad \dots \end{align*}$$

$\mathbb {Q}(\beta )$

$\varphi :=(1+\sqrt {5})/2$

$k\geqslant 1$

$a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_k\in \mathbb {Q}(\beta )$

$a_1t(n)+a_2t(n^2)+\cdots +a_kt(n^k)\}_{n\geqslant 1}$

We establish the linear independence of values of the q-analogue of the exponential function and its derivatives at specified algebraic arguments, when q is a Pisot–Vijayaraghavan number. We also deduce similar results for cognate functions, such as the Tschakaloff function and certain generalised q-series.

In this note, we prove that every Salem number is expressible as a difference of two Pisot numbers. More precisely, we show that for each Salem number α of degree d, there are infinitely many positive integers n for which $\alpha^{2n-1}-\alpha^n+\alpha$ and $\alpha^{2n-1}-\alpha^n$ are both Pisot numbers of degree d and that the smallest such n is at most $6^{d/2-1}+1$. We also prove that every real positive algebraic number can be expressed as a quotient of two Pisot numbers. Earlier, Salem himself had proved that every Salem number can be written in this way.

In this paper, we consider an equivalence relation on the space $AP(\mathbb {R},X)$ of almost periodic functions with values in a prefixed Banach space X. In this context, it is known that the normality or Bochner-type property, which characterizes these functions, is based on the relative compactness of the family of translates. Now, we prove that every equivalence class is sequentially compact and the family of translates of a function belonging to this subspace is dense in its own class, i.e., the condition of almost periodicity of a function $f\in AP(\mathbb {R},X)$ yields that every sequence of translates of f has a subsequence that converges to a function equivalent to f. This extends previous work by the same authors on the case of numerical almost periodic functions.

We prove that, for any small $\varepsilon > 0$, the number of irrationals among the following odd zeta values: $\zeta (3),\zeta (5),\zeta (7),\ldots ,\zeta (s)$ is at least $( c_0 - \varepsilon )({s^{1/2}}/{(\log s)^{1/2}})$, provided $s$ is a sufficiently large odd integer with respect to $\varepsilon$. The constant $c_0 = 1.192507\ldots$ can be expressed in closed form. Our work improves the lower bound $2^{(1-\varepsilon )({\log s}/{\log \log s})}$ of the previous work of Fischler, Sprang and Zudilin. We follow the same strategy of Fischler, Sprang and Zudilin. The main new ingredient is an asymptotically optimal design for the zeros of the auxiliary rational functions, which relates to the inverse totient problem.

Let $F_{n}$ and $L_{n}$ be the Fibonacci and Lucas numbers, respectively. Four corresponding zeta functions in $s$ are defined by

$$\begin{eqnarray}\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{F}(s):=\mathop{\sum }_{n=1}^{\infty }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{F_{n}^{s}}},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{F}^{\ast }(s):=\mathop{\sum }_{n=1}^{\infty }{\displaystyle \frac{(-1)^{n+1}}{F_{n}^{s}}},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{L}(s):=\mathop{\sum }_{n=1}^{\infty }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{L_{n}^{s}}},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{L}^{\ast }(s):=\mathop{\sum }_{n=1}^{\infty }{\displaystyle \frac{(-1)^{n+1}}{L_{n}^{s}}}.\end{eqnarray}$$

$R(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}),Q(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}),$

$P(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C})$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}$

$0<\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}<1$

$s$

$m$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{s=1}^{m}(t_{s}\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{F}(2s)+u_{s}\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{F}^{\ast }(2s)+v_{s}\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{L}(2s)+w_{s}\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{L}^{\ast }(2s))=0\end{eqnarray}$$

$t_{s},u_{s},v_{s},w_{s}\in \mathbb{Q}$

$(1\leq s\leq m)$

$\mathbb{Q}$

$m$

$-2\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{F}(2)+\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{F}^{\ast }(2)+5\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}_{L}^{\ast }(2)=0$

$2s$

In 1965, A. Livingston conjectured the $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$-linear independence of logarithms of values of the sine function at rational arguments. In 2016, S. Pathak disproved the conjecture. In this article, we give a new proof of Livingston’s conjecture using some fundamental trigonometric identities. Moreover, we show that a stronger version of her theorem is true. In fact, we modify this conjecture by introducing a co-primality condition, and in that case we provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the conjecture to be true. Finally, we identify a maximal linearly independent subset of the numbers considered in Livingston’s conjecture.

We estimate the linear independence measures for the values of a class of Mahler functions of degrees 1 and 2. For this purpose, we study the determinants of suitable Hermite–Padé approximation polynomials. Based on the non-vanishing property of these determinants, we apply the functional equations to get an infinite sequence of approximations that is used to produce the linear independence measures.

In an attempt to resolve a folklore conjecture of Erdös regarding the non-vanishing at $s\,=\,1$ of the $L$ -series attached to a periodic arithmetical function with period $q$ and values in $\left\{ -1,\,1 \right\}$ , Livingston conjectured the $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$ -linear independence of logarithms of certain algebraic numbers. In this paper, we disprove Livingston’s conjecture for composite $q\,\ge \,4$ , highlighting that a new approach is required to settle Erdös conjecture. We also prove that the conjecture is true for prime $q\,\ge \,3$ , and indicate that more ingredients will be needed to settle Erdös conjecture for prime $q$ .

Let 𝕀 denote an imaginary quadratic field or the field ℚ of rational numbers and let ℤ𝕀 denote its ring of integers. We shall prove a new explicit Baker-type lower bound for a ℤ𝕀-linear form in the numbers 1, eα1 , . . . , eαm, m ⩾ 2, where α0 = 0, α1, . . . , αm are m + 1 different numbers from the field 𝕀. Our work gives substantial improvements on the existing explicit versions of Baker’s work about exponential values at rational points. In particular, dependencies on m are improved.

Let 𝕂⊂ℂ be a number field. We show how to compute 𝕂-irrationality measures of a number ξ∉𝕂, and 𝕂-nonquadraticity measures of ξ if [𝕂(ξ):𝕂]>2. By applying the saddle point method to a family of double complex integrals, we prove ℚ(α)-irrationality measures and ℚ(α)-nonquadraticity measures of log α for several algebraic numbers α∈ℂ, improving earlier results due to Amoroso and the second-named author.

We construct bivariate polynomial approximations of the Lerch function that for certain specialisations of the variables and parameters turn out to be Hermite–Padé approximants either of the polylogarithms or of Hurwitz zeta functions. In the former case, we recover known results, while in the latter the results are new and generalise some recent works of Beukers and Prévost. Finally, we make a detailed comparison of our work with Beukers’. Such constructions are useful in the arithmetical study of the values of the Riemann zeta function at integer points and of the Kubota–Leopold $p$ -adic zeta function.

Let $q$ , $m$ , $M\,\ge \,2$ be positive integers and ${{r}_{1}},\,{{r}_{2}},...,\,{{r}_{m}}$ be positive rationals and consider the following $M$ multivariate infinite products

$${{F}_{i}}\,=\,\prod\limits_{j=0}^{\infty }{(1\,+\,{{q}^{-(Mj+i)}}\,{{r}_{1}}\,+\,{{q}^{-2(Mj+i)}}\,{{r}_{2}}\,+\,\cdot \cdot \cdot +\,{{q}^{-m(Mj+i)}}\,{{r}_{m}})}$$

for $i\,=\,0,\,1,\,.\,.\,.\,,\,M\,-\,1$ . In this article, we study the linear independence of these infinite products. In particular, we obtain a lower bound for the dimension of the vector space $\mathbb{Q}{{F}_{0}}\,+\,\mathbb{Q}{{F}_{1}}\,+\cdot \cdot \cdot +\,\mathbb{Q}{{F}_{M-1}}\,+\,\mathbb{Q}$ over ℚ and show that among these $M$ infinite products, ${{F}_{0}}\,+\,{{F}_{1}},...,\,{{F}_{M-1}}$ , at least $\sim \,M/m\left( m+1 \right)$ of them are irrational for fixed $m$ and $M\,\to \,\infty $ .

Power series $\sum_{n=0}^\infty f(n)x^n$ with non-zero convergence radius $R(f)$ are considered, and the arithmetical nature (that is, irrationality, or even transcendence) of the corresponding multivariate series $\smash{\sum_{i_1,\ldots,i_m\!=0}^\infty f(i_1+\ldots +i_m)x_1^{i_1}\cdot\ldots \cdot x_m^{i_m}}$ is studied if $x_1,\ldots,x_m$ and the sequence $(f(n))$ satisfy appropriate arithmetical conditions. It follows that such arithmetical results can be written down easily if linear independence results on the function $F(x)$, defined in $|x|\,{<}\,R(f)$ by the original one-dimensional power series, and possibly its derivatives at the points $x_\mu$ are known. Some typical applications are explicitly stated.