We find a new refinement of Fine’s partition theorem on partitions into distinct parts with the minimum part odd. As a consequence, we obtain two companion partition identities. Both analytic and combinatorial proofs are provided.

We show that there are biases in the number of appearances of the parts in two residue classes in the set of ordinary partitions. More precisely, let $p_{j,k,m} (n)$ be the number of partitions of n such that there are more parts congruent to j modulo m than parts congruent to k modulo m for $m \geq 2$. We prove that $p_{1,0,m} (n)$ is in general larger than $p_{0,1,m} (n)$. We also obtain asymptotic formulas for $p_{1,0,m}(n)$ and $p_{0,1,m}(n)$ for $m \geq 2$.

The general position number of a connected graph is the cardinality of a largest set of vertices such that no three pairwise-distinct vertices from the set lie on a common shortest path. In this paper it is proved that the general position number is additive on the Cartesian product of two trees.

Fix positive integers k and n with $k \leq n$. Numbers $x_0, x_1, x_2, \ldots , x_{n - 1}$, each equal to $\pm {1}$, are cyclically arranged (so that $x_0$ follows $x_{n - 1}$) in that order. The problem is to find the product $P = x_0x_1 \cdots x_{n - 1}$ of all n numbers by asking the smallest number of questions of the type $Q_i$: what is $x_ix_{i + 1}x_{i + 2} \cdots x_{i+ k -1}$? (where all the subscripts are read modulo n). This paper studies the problem and some of its generalisations.

We prove that the annihilating-ideal graph of a commutative semigroup with unity is, in general, not weakly perfect. This settles the conjecture of DeMeyer and Schneider [‘The annihilating-ideal graph of commutative semigroups’, J. Algebra 469 (2017), 402–420]. Further, we prove that the zero-divisor graphs of semigroups with respect to semiprime ideals are weakly perfect. This enables us to produce a large class of examples of weakly perfect zero-divisor graphs from a fixed semigroup by choosing different semiprime ideals.

Let $ (G_n)_{n=0}^{\infty } $ be a nondegenerate linear recurrence sequence whose power sum representation is given by $ G_n = a_1(n) \alpha _1^n + \cdots + a_t(n) \alpha _t^n $. We prove a function field analogue of the well-known result in the number field case that, under some nonrestrictive conditions, $ |{G_n}| \geq ( \max _{j=1,\ldots ,t} |{\alpha _j}| )^{n(1-\varepsilon )} $ for $ n $ large enough.

Aigner showed in 1934 that nontrivial quadratic solutions to $x^4 + y^4 = 1$ exist only in $\mathbb Q(\sqrt {-7})$. Following a method of Mordell, we show that nontrivial quadratic solutions to $x^4 + 2^ny^4 = 1$ arise from integer solutions to the equations $X^4 \pm 2^nY^4 = Z^2$ investigated in 1853 by V. A. Lebesgue.

Let $g \geq 2$ be an integer. A natural number is said to be a base-g Niven number if it is divisible by the sum of its base-g digits. Assuming Hooley’s Riemann hypothesis, we prove that the set of base-g Niven numbers is an additive basis, that is, there exists a positive integer $C_g$ such that every natural number is the sum of at most $C_g$ base-g Niven numbers.

A graph is called radially maximal if it is not complete and the addition of any new edge decreases its radius. Harary and Thomassen [‘Anticritical graphs’, Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 79(1) (1976), 11–18] proved that the radius r and diameter d of any radially maximal graph satisfy $r\le d\le 2r-2.$ Dutton et al. [‘Changing and unchanging of the radius of a graph’, Linear Algebra Appl. 217 (1995), 67–82] rediscovered this result with a different proof and conjectured that the converse is true, that is, if r and d are positive integers satisfying $r\le d\le 2r-2,$ then there exists a radially maximal graph with radius r and diameter $d.$ We prove this conjecture and a little more.

Jeśmanowicz conjectured that $(x,y,z)=(2,2,2)$ is the only positive integer solution of the equation $(*)\; ((\kern1.5pt f^2-g^2)n)^x+(2fgn)^y=((\kern1.5pt f^2+g^2)n)^x$, where n is a positive integer and f, g are positive integers such that $f>g$, $\gcd (\kern1.5pt f,g)=1$ and $f \not \equiv g\pmod 2$. Using Baker’s method, we prove that: (i) if $n>1$, $f \ge 98$ and $g=1$, then $(*)$ has no positive integer solutions $(x,y,z)$ with $x>z>y$; and (ii) if $n>1$, $f=2^rs^2$ and $g=1$, where r, s are positive integers satisfying$(**)\; 2 \nmid s$ and $s<2^{r/2}$, then $(*)$ has no positive integer solutions $(x,y,z)$ with $y>z>x$. Thus, Jeśmanowicz’ conjecture is true if $f=2^rs^2$ and $g=1$, where r, s are positive integers satisfying $(**)$.

A connected graph G is $\mathcal {CF}$-connected if there is a path between every pair of vertices with no crossing on its edges for each optimal drawing of G. We conjecture that a complete bipartite graph $K_{m,n}$ is $\mathcal {CF}$-connected if and only if it does not contain a subgraph of $K_{3,6}$ or $K_{4,4}$. We establish the validity of this conjecture for all complete bipartite graphs $K_{m,n}$ for any $m,n$ with $\min \{m,n\}\leq 6$, and conditionally for $m,n\geq 7$ on the assumption of Zarankiewicz’s conjecture that $\mathrm {cr}(K_{m,n})=\big \lfloor \frac {m}{2} \big \rfloor \big \lfloor \frac {m-1}{2} \big \rfloor \big \lfloor \frac {n}{2} \big \rfloor \big \lfloor \frac {n-1}{2} \big \rfloor $.

We prove a quantitative partial result in support of the dynamical Mordell–Lang conjecture (also known as the DML conjecture) in positive characteristic. More precisely, we show the following: given a field K of characteristic p, a semiabelian variety X defined over a finite subfield of K and endowed with a regular self-map $\Phi :X{\longrightarrow } X$ defined over K, a point $\alpha \in X(K)$ and a subvariety $V\subseteq X$, then the set of all nonnegative integers n such that $\Phi ^n(\alpha )\in V(K)$ is a union of finitely many arithmetic progressions along with a subset S with the property that there exists a positive real number A (depending only on X, $\Phi $, $\alpha $ and V) such that for each positive integer M,

$$\begin{align*}\scriptsize\#\{n\in S\colon n\le M\}\le A\cdot (1+\log M)^{\dim V}.\end{align*}$$

Let k and l be positive integers satisfying $k \ge 2, l \ge 1$. A set $\mathcal {A}$ of positive integers is an asymptotic basis of order k if every large enough positive integer can be represented as the sum of k terms from $\mathcal {A}$. About 35 years ago, P. Erdős asked: does there exist an asymptotic basis of order k where all the subset sums with at most l terms are pairwise distinct with the exception of a finite number of cases as long as $l \le k - 1$? We use probabilistic tools to prove the existence of an asymptotic basis of order $2k+1$ for which all the sums of at most k elements are pairwise distinct except for ‘small’ numbers.

Let K be an algebraic number field. We investigate the K-rational distance problem and prove that there are infinitely many nonisomorphic cubic number fields and a number field of degree n for every $n\geq 2$ in which there is a point in the plane of a unit square at K-rational distances from the four vertices of the square.

We provide an easy method for the construction of characteristic polynomials of simple ordinary abelian varieties ${{\mathcal A}}$ of dimension g over a finite field ${{\mathbb F}}_q$, when $q\ge 4$ and $2g=\rho ^{b-1}(\rho -1)$, for some prime $\rho \ge 5$ with $b\ge 1$. Moreover, we show that ${{\mathcal A}}$ is absolutely simple if $b=1$ and g is prime, but ${{\mathcal A}}$ is not absolutely simple for any prime $\rho \ge 5$ with $b>1$.

The multiple T-value, which is a variant of the multiple zeta value of level two, was introduced by Kaneko and Tsumura [‘Zeta functions connecting multiple zeta values and poly-Bernoulli numbers’, in: Various Aspects of Multiple Zeta Functions, Advanced Studies in Pure Mathematics, 84 (Mathematical Society of Japan, Tokyo, 2020), 181–204]. We show that the generating function of a weighted sum of multiple T-values of fixed weight and depth is given in terms of the multiple T-values of depth one by solving a differential equation of Heun type.

Z.-W. Sun [‘Refining Lagrange’s four-square theorem’, J. Number Theory 175 (2017), 169–190] conjectured that every positive integer n can be written as $ x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2\ (x,y,z,w\in \mathbb {N}=\{0,1,\ldots \})$ with $x+3y$ a square and also as $n=x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2\ (x,y,z,w \in \mathbb {Z})$ with $x+3y\in \{4^k:k\in \mathbb {N}\}$. In this paper, we confirm these conjectures via the arithmetic theory of ternary quadratic forms.

We consider the continued fraction expansion of real numbers under the action of a nonuniform lattice in $\text {PSL}(2,{\mathbb R})$ and prove metric relations between the convergents and a natural geometric notion of good approximations.

We consider the sum $\sum 1/\gamma $, where $\gamma $ ranges over the ordinates of nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta-function in an interval $(0,T]$, and examine its behaviour as $T \to \infty $. We show that, after subtracting a smooth approximation $({1}/{4\pi }) \log ^2(T/2\pi ),$ the sum tends to a limit $H \approx -0.0171594$, which can be expressed as an integral. We calculate H to high accuracy, using a method which has error $O((\log T)/T^2)$. Our results improve on earlier results by Hassani [‘Explicit approximation of the sums over the imaginary part of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function’, Appl. Math. E-Notes 16 (2016), 109–116] and other authors.

We investigate the sum of the parts in all the partitions of n into distinct parts and give two infinite families of linear inequalities involving this sum. The results can be seen as new connections between partitions and divisors.