arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Igor E. Shparlinski.
We use bounds of mixed character sum to study the distribution of solutions to certain polynomial systems of congruences modulo a prime $p$. In particular, we obtain nontrivial results about the number of solution in boxes with the side length below $p^{1/2}$, which seems to be the limit of more general methods based on the bounds of exponential sums along varieties.
Let $G_1,..., G_n \in \Fp[X_1,...,X_m]$ be $n$ polynomials in $m$ variables over the finite field $\Fp$ of $p$ elements. A result of {É}. Fouvry and N. M. Katz shows that under some natural condition, for any fixed $\varepsilon$ and sufficiently large prime $p$ the vectors of fractional parts $$ (\{\frac{G_1(\vec{x})}{p}},...,\{\frac{G_n(\vec{x})}{p}}), \qquad \vec{x} \in Γ, $$ are uniformly distributed in the unit cube $[0,1]^n$ for any cube $Γ\in [0, p-1]^m$ with the side length $h \ge p^{1/2} (\log p)^{1 + \varepsilon}$. Here we use this result to show the above vectors remain uniformly distributed, when $\vec{x}$ runs through a rather general set. We also obtain new results about the distribution of solutions to system of polynomial congruences.
Recently, several bounds have been obtained on the number of solutions to congruences of the type $$ (x_1+s)...(x_ν+s)\equiv (y_1+s)...(y_ν+s)\not\equiv0 \pmod p $$ modulo a prime $p$ with variables from some short intervals. Here, for almost all $p$ and all $s$ and also for a fixed $p$ and almost all $s$, we derive stronger bounds. We also use similar ideas to show that for almost all primes, one can always find an element of a large order in any rather short interval.
We consider a modification of the classical number theoretic question about the gaps between consecutive primitive roots modulo a prime $p$, which by the well-known result of Burgess are known to be at most $p^{1/4+o(1)}$. Here we measure the distance in the Hamming metric and show that if $p$ is a sufficiently large $r$-bit prime, then for any integer $n \in [1,p]$ one can obtain a primitive root modulo $p$ by changing at most $0.11002786...r$ binary digits of $n$. This is stronger than what can be deduced from the Burgess result. Experimentally, the number of necessary bit changes is very small. We also show that each Hilbert cube contained in the complement of the primitive roots modulo $p$ has dimension at most $O(p^{1/5+ε})$, improving on previous results of this kind.
We give an upper bound for the number elliptic Carmichael numbers $n \le x$ that have recently been introduced by J. H. Silverman. We also discuss several possible ways for further improvements.
We give a survey of a variety of recent results about the distribution and some geometric properties of points $(x,y)$ on modular hyperbolas $xy \equiv a \pmod m$. We also outline a very diverse range of applications of such results, discuss multivariate generalisations and suggest a number of open problems of different levels of difficulty.
We show that, for any fixed $\varepsilon > 0$ and almost all primes $p$, the $g$-ary expansion of any fraction $m/p$ with $\gcd(m,p) = 1$ contains almost all $g$-ary strings of length $k < (5/24 - \varepsilon) \log_g p$. This complements a result of J. Bourgain, S. V. Konyagin, and I. E. Shparlinski that asserts that, for almost all primes, all $g$-ary strings of length $k < (41/504 -\varepsilon) \log_g p$ occur in the $g$-ary expansion of $m/p$.
We show that the reductions modulo primes $p\le x$ of the elliptic curve $$ Y^2 = X^3 + f(a)X + g(b), $$ behave as predicted by the Lang-Trotter and Sato-Tate conjectures, on average over integers $a \in [-A,A]$ and $b \in [-B,B]$ for $A$ and $B$ reasonably small compared to $x$, provided that $f(T), g(T) \in \Z[T]$ are not powers of another polynomial over $\Q$. For $f(T) = g(T) = T$ first results of this kind are due to E. Fouvry and M. R. Murty and have been further extended by other authors. Our technique is different from that of E. Fouvry and M. R. Murty which does not seem to work in the case of general polynomials $f$ and $g$.
We introduce several new methods to obtain upper bounds on the number of solutions of the congruences $f(x) \equiv y \pmod p$ and $f(x) \equiv y^2 \pmod p,$ with a prime $p$ and a polynomial $f$, where $(x,y)$ belongs to an arbitrary square with side length $M$. We use these results and methods to derive non-trivial upper bounds for the number of hyperelliptic curves $Y^2=X^{2g+1} + a_{2g-1}X^{2g-1} +...+ a_1X+a_0$ over the finite field $\F_p$ of $p$ elements, with coefficients in a $2g$-dimensional cube $ (a_0,..., a_{2g-1})\in [R_0+1,R_0+M]\times...\times [R_{2g-1}+1,R_{2g-1}+M]$ that are isomorphic to a given curve and give an almost sharp lower bound on the number of non-isomorphic hyperelliptic curves with coefficients in that cube. Furthermore, we study the size of the smallest box that contain a partial trajectory of a polynomial dynamical system over $\F_p$.
We consider various arithmetic questions for the Piatetski-Shapiro sequences $\fl{n^c}$ ($n=1,2,3,...$) with $c>1$, $c\not\in\N$. We exhibit a positive function $θ(c)$ with the property that the largest prime factor of $\fl{n^c}$ exceeds $n^{θ(c)-\eps}$ infinitely often. For $c\in(1,\tfrac{149}{87})$ we show that the counting function of natural numbers $n\le x$ for which $\fl{n^c}$ is squarefree satisfies the expected asymptotic formula. For $c\in(1,\tfrac{147}{145})$ we show that there are infinitely many Carmichael numbers composed entirely of primes of the form $p=\fl{n^c}$.
We consider the problem of recovering a hidden element $s$ of a finite field $\F_q$ of $q$ elements from queries to an oracle that for a given $x\in \F_q$ returns $(x+s)^e$ for a given divisor $e\mid q-1$. We use some techniques from additive combinatorics and analytic number theory that lead to more efficient algorithms than the naive interpolation algorithm, for example, they use substantially fewer queries to the oracle.
Given an elliptic curve E over a finite field F_q of q elements, we say that an odd prime ell not dividing q is an Elkies prime for E if t_E^2 - 4q is a square modulo ell, where t_E = q+1 - #E(F_q) and #E(F_q) is the number of F_q-rational points on E; otherwise ell is called an Atkin prime. We show that there are asymptotically the same number of Atkin and Elkies primes ell < L on average over all curves E over F_q, provided that L >= (log q)^e for any fixed e > 0 and a sufficiently large q. We use this result to design and analyse a fast algorithm to generate random elliptic curves with #E(F_p) prime, where p varies uniformly over primes in a given interval [x,2x].
We estimate the number of possible types degree patterns of $k$-lacunary polynomials of degree $t < p$ which split completely modulo $p$. The result is based on a combination of a bound on the number of zeros of lacunary polynomials with some graph theory arguments.
We improve an estimate of A.Granville (1987) on the number of vanishing Fermat quotients $q_p(\ell)$ modulo a prime $p$ when $\ell$ runs through primes $\ell \le N$. We use this bound to obtain an unconditional improvement of the conditional (under the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis) estimate of Y. Ihara (2006) on a certain sum, related to vanishing Fermat quotients. In turn this sum appears in the study of the index of certain subfields of of cyclotomic fields $\Q(\exp(2 πi/p^2))$.
For a prime $p$ and an integer $u$ with $\gcd(u,p)=1$, we define Fermat quotients by the conditions $$ q_p(u) \equiv \frac{u^{p-1} -1}{p} \pmod p, \qquad 0 \le q_p(u) \le p-1. $$ D. R. Heath-Brown has given a bound of exponential sums with $N$ consecutive Fermat quotients that is nontrivial for $N\ge p^{1/2+ε}$ for any fixed $ε>0$. We use a recent idea of M. Z. Garaev together with a form of the large sieve inequality due to S. Baier and L. Zhao, to show that on average over $p$ one can obtain a nontrivial estimate for much shorter sums starting with $N\ge p^ε$. We also obtain lower bounds on the image size of the first $N$ consecutive Fermat quotients and use it to prove that there is a positive integer $n\le p^{3/4 + o(1)}$ such that $q_p(n)$ is a primitive root modulo $p$.
We obtain a series of estimates on the number of small integers and small order Farey fractions which belong to a given coset of a subgroup of order $t$ of the group of units of the residue ring modulo a prime $p$, in the case when $t$ is small compared to $p$. We give two applications of these results: to the simultaneous distribution of two high degree monomials $x^{k_1}$ and $x^{k_2}$ modulo $p$ and to a question of J. Holden and P. Moree on fixed points of the discrete logarithm.
Given a prime $p$, an elliptic curve $\E/\F_p$ over the finite field $\F_p$ of $p$ elements and a binary \lrs\ $\(u(n)\)_{n =1}^\infty$ of order~$r$, we study the distribution of the sequence of points $$ \sum_{j=0}^{r-1} u(n+j)P_j, \qquad n =1,..., N, $$ on average over all possible choices of $\F_p$-rational points $P_1,..., P_r$ on~$\E$. For a sufficiently large $N$ we improve and generalise a previous result in this direction due to E.~El~Mahassni.
Given integers $a$ and $m\ge 2$, let $\Hm$ be the following set of integral points $$ \Hm= \{(x,y) \ : \ xy \equiv a \pmod m,\ 1\le x,y \le m-1\} $$ We improve several previously known upper bounds on $v_a(m)$, the number of vertices of the convex closure of $\Hm$, and show that uniformly over all $a$ with $\gcd(a,m)=1$ we have $v_a(m) \le m^{1/2 + o(1)}$ and furthermore, we have $v_a(m) \le m^{5/12 + o(1)}$ for $m$ which are almost squarefree.