Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
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
$q$ .