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Kaisa Matomaki, Maksym Radziwill, and I have uploaded to the arXiv our paper “Correlations of the von Mangoldt and higher divisor functions II. Divisor correlations in short ranges“. This is a sequel of sorts to our previous paper on divisor correlations, though the proof techniques in this paper are rather different. As with the previous paper, our interest is in correlations such as

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n) d_l(n+h) \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for medium-sized ${h}$ and large ${X}$, where ${k \geq l \geq 1}$ are natural numbers and ${d_k(n) = \sum_{n = m_1 \dots m_k} 1}$ is the ${k^{th}}$ divisor function (actually our methods can also treat a generalisation in which ${k}$ is non-integer, but for simplicity let us stick with the integer case for this discussion). Our methods also allow for one of the divisor function factors to be replaced with a von Mangoldt function, but (in contrast to the previous paper) we cannot treat the case when both factors are von Mangoldt.

As discussed in this previous post, one heuristically expects an asymptotic of the form

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n) d_l(n+h) = P_{k,l,h}( \log X ) X + O( X^{1/2+\varepsilon})$

for any fixed ${\varepsilon>0}$, where ${P_{k,l,h}}$ is a certain explicit (but rather complicated) polynomial of degree ${k+l-1}$. Such asymptotics are known when ${l \leq 2}$, but remain open for ${k \geq l \geq 3}$. In the previous paper, we were able to obtain a weaker bound of the form

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n) d_l(n+h) = P_{k,l,h}( \log X ) X + O_A( X \log^{-A} X)$

for ${1-O_A(\log^{-A} X)}$ of the shifts ${-H \leq h \leq H}$, whenever the shift range ${H}$ lies between ${X^{8/33+\varepsilon}}$ and ${X^{1-\varepsilon}}$. But the methods become increasingly hard to use as ${H}$ gets smaller. In this paper, we use a rather different method to obtain the even weaker bound

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n) d_l(n+h) = (1+o(1)) P_{k,l,h}( \log X ) X$

for ${1-o(1)}$ of the shifts ${-H \leq h \leq H}$, where ${H}$ can now be as short as ${H = \log^{10^4 k \log k} X}$. The constant ${10^4}$ can be improved, but there are serious obstacles to using our method to go below ${\log^{k \log k} X}$ (as the exceptionally large values of ${d_k}$ then begin to dominate). This can be viewed as an analogue to our previous paper on correlations of bounded multiplicative functions on average, in which the functions ${d_k,d_l}$ are now unbounded, and indeed our proof strategy is based in large part on that paper (but with many significant new technical complications).

We now discuss some of the ingredients of the proof. Unsurprisingly, the first step is the circle method, expressing (1) in terms of exponential sums such as

$\displaystyle S(\alpha) := \sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n) e(\alpha).$

Actually, it is convenient to first prune ${d_k}$ slightly by zeroing out this function on “atypical” numbers ${n}$ that have an unusually small or large number of factors in a certain sense, but let us ignore this technicality for this discussion. The contribution of ${S(\alpha)}$ for “major arc” ${\alpha}$ can be treated by standard techniques (and is the source of the main term ${P_{k,l,h}(\log X) X}$; the main difficulty comes from treating the contribution of “minor arc” ${\alpha}$.

In our previous paper on bounded multiplicative functions, we used Plancherel’s theorem to estimate the global ${L^2}$ norm ${\int_{{\bf R}/{\bf Z}} |S(\alpha)|^2\ d\alpha}$, and then also used the Katai-Bourgain-Sarnak-Ziegler orthogonality criterion to control local ${L^2}$ norms ${\int_I |S(\alpha)|^2\ d\alpha}$, where ${I}$ was a minor arc interval of length about ${1/H}$, and these two estimates together were sufficient to get a good bound on correlations by an application of Hölder’s inequality. For ${d_k}$, it is more convenient to use Dirichlet series methods (and Ramaré-type factorisations of such Dirichlet series) to control local ${L^2}$ norms on minor arcs, in the spirit of the proof of the Matomaki-Radziwill theorem; a key point is to develop “log-free” mean value theorems for Dirichlet series associated to functions such as ${d_k}$, so as not to wipe out the (rather small) savings one will get over the trivial bound from this method. On the other hand, the global ${L^2}$ bound will definitely be unusable, because the ${\ell^2}$ sum ${\sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n)^2}$ has too many unwanted factors of ${\log X}$. Fortunately, we can substitute this global ${L^2}$ bound with a “large values” bound that controls expressions such as

$\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^J \int_{I_i} |S(\alpha)|^2\ d\alpha$

for a moderate number of disjoint intervals ${I_1,\dots,I_J}$, with a bound that is slightly better (for ${J}$ a medium-sized power of ${\log X}$) than what one would have obtained by bounding each integral ${\int_{I_i} |S(\alpha)|^2\ d\alpha}$ separately. (One needs to save more than ${J^{1/2}}$ for the argument to work; we end up saving a factor of about ${J^{3/4}}$.) This large values estimate is probably the most novel contribution of the paper. After taking the Fourier transform, matters basically reduce to getting a good estimate for

$\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^J (\int_X^{2X} |\sum_{x \leq n \leq x+H} d_k(n) e(\alpha_i n)|^2\ dx)^{1/2},$

where ${\alpha_i}$ is the midpoint of ${I_i}$; thus we need some upper bound on the large local Fourier coefficients of ${d_k}$. These coefficients are difficult to calculate directly, but, in the spirit of a paper of Ben Green and myself, we can try to replace ${d_k}$ by a more tractable and “pseudorandom” majorant ${\tilde d_k}$ for which the local Fourier coefficients are computable (on average). After a standard duality argument, one ends up having to control expressions such as

$\displaystyle |\sum_{x \leq n \leq x+H} \tilde d_k(n) e((\alpha_i -\alpha_{i'}) n)|$

after various averaging in the ${x, i,i'}$ parameters. These local Fourier coefficients of ${\tilde d_k}$ turn out to be small on average unless ${\alpha_i -\alpha_{i'}}$ is “major arc”. One then is left with a mostly combinatorial problem of trying to bound how often this major arc scenario occurs. This is very close to a computation in the previously mentioned paper of Ben and myself; there is a technical wrinkle in that the ${\alpha_i}$ are not as well separated as they were in my paper with Ben, but it turns out that one can modify the arguments in that paper to still obtain a satisfactory estimate in this case (after first grouping nearby frequencies ${\alpha_i}$ together, and modifying the duality argument accordingly).

I have just uploaded to the arXiv the paper “An inverse theorem for an inequality of Kneser“, submitted to a special issue of the Proceedings of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in honour of Sergei Konyagin. It concerns an inequality of Kneser discussed previously in this blog, namely that

$\displaystyle \mu(A+B) \geq \min(\mu(A)+\mu(B), 1) \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

whenever ${A,B}$ are compact non-empty subsets of a compact connected additive group ${G}$ with probability Haar measure ${\mu}$.  (A later result of Kemperman extended this inequality to the nonabelian case.) This inequality is non-trivial in the regime

$\displaystyle \mu(A), \mu(B), 1- \mu(A)-\mu(B) > 0. \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

The connectedness of ${G}$ is essential, otherwise one could form counterexamples involving proper subgroups of ${G}$ of positive measure. In the blog post, I indicated how this inequality (together with a more “robust” strengthening of it) could be deduced from submodularity inequalities such as

$\displaystyle \mu( (A_1 \cup A_2) + B) + \mu( (A_1 \cap A_2) + B)$

$\displaystyle \leq \mu(A_1+B) + \mu(A_2+B) \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

which in turn easily follows from the identity ${(A_1 \cup A_2) + B = (A_1+B) \cup (A_2+B)}$ and the inclusion ${(A_1 \cap A_2) + B \subset (A_1 +B) \cap (A_2+B)}$, combined with the inclusion-exclusion formula.

In the non-trivial regime (2), equality can be attained in (1), for instance by taking ${G}$ to be the unit circle ${G = {\bf R}/{\bf Z}}$ and ${A,B}$ to be arcs in that circle (obeying (2)). A bit more generally, if ${G}$ is an arbitrary connected compact abelian group and ${\xi: G \rightarrow {\bf R}/{\bf Z}}$ is a non-trivial character (i.e., a continuous homomorphism), then ${\xi}$ must be surjective (as ${{\bf R}/{\bf Z}}$ has no non-trivial connected subgroups), and one can take ${A = \xi^{-1}(I)}$ and ${B = \xi^{-1}(J)}$ for some arcs ${I,J}$ in that circle (again choosing the measures of these arcs to obey (2)). The main result of this paper is an inverse theorem that asserts that this is the only way in which equality can occur in (1) (assuming (2)); furthermore, if (1) is close to being satisfied with equality and (2) holds, then ${A,B}$ must be close (in measure) to an example of the above form ${A = \xi^{-1}(I), B = \xi^{-1}(J)}$. Actually, for technical reasons (and for the applications we have in mind), it is important to establish an inverse theorem not just for (1), but for the more robust version mentioned earlier (in which the sumset ${A+B}$ is replaced by the partial sumset ${A +_\varepsilon B}$ consisting of “popular” sums).

Roughly speaking, the idea is as follows. Let us informally call ${(A,B)}$ a critical pair if (2) holds and the inequality (1) (or more precisely, a robust version of this inequality) is almost obeyed with equality. The notion of a critical pair obeys some useful closure properties. Firstly, it is symmetric in ${A,B}$, and invariant with respect to translation of either ${A}$ or ${B}$. Furthermore, from the submodularity inequality (3), one can show that if ${(A_1,B)}$ and ${(A_2,B)}$ are critical pairs (with ${\mu(A_1 \cap A_2)}$ and ${1 - \mu(A_1 \cup A_2) - \mu(B)}$ positive), then ${(A_1 \cap A_2,B)}$ and ${(A_1 \cup A_2, B)}$ are also critical pairs. (Note that this is consistent with the claim that critical pairs only occur when ${A,B}$ come from arcs of a circle.) Similarly, from associativity ${(A+B)+C = A+(B+C)}$, one can show that if ${(A,B)}$ and ${(A+B,C)}$ are critical pairs, then so are ${(B,C)}$ and ${(A,B+C)}$.

One can combine these closure properties to obtain further ones. For instance, suppose ${A,B}$ is such that ${\mu(A+B) 0}$. Then (cheating a little bit), one can show that ${(A+B,C)}$ is also a critical pair, basically because ${A+B}$ is the union of the ${A+b}$, ${b \in B}$, the ${(A+b,C)}$ are all critical pairs, and the ${A+b}$ all intersect each other. This argument doesn’t quite work as stated because one has to apply the closure property under union an uncountable number of times, but it turns out that if one works with the robust version of sumsets and uses a random sampling argument to approximate ${A+B}$ by the union of finitely many of the ${A+b}$, then the argument can be made to work.

Using all of these closure properties, it turns out that one can start with an arbitrary critical pair ${(A,B)}$ and end up with a small set ${C}$ such that ${(A,C)}$ and ${(kC,C)}$ are also critical pairs for all ${1 \leq k \leq 10^4}$ (say), where ${kC}$ is the ${k}$-fold sumset of ${C}$. (Intuitively, if ${A,B}$ are thought of as secretly coming from the pullback of arcs ${I,J}$ by some character ${\xi}$, then ${C}$ should be the pullback of a much shorter arc by the same character.) In particular, ${C}$ exhibits linear growth, in that ${\mu(kC) = k\mu(C)}$ for all ${1 \leq k \leq 10^4}$. One can now use standard technology from inverse sumset theory to show first that ${C}$ has a very large Fourier coefficient (and thus is biased with respect to some character ${\xi}$), and secondly that ${C}$ is in fact almost of the form ${C = \xi^{-1}(K)}$ for some arc ${K}$, from which it is not difficult to conclude similar statements for ${A}$ and ${B}$ and thus finish the proof of the inverse theorem.

In order to make the above argument rigorous, one has to be more precise about what the modifier “almost” means in the definition of a critical pair. I chose to do this in the language of “cheap” nonstandard analysis (aka asymptotic analysis), as discussed in this previous blog post; one could also have used the full-strength version of nonstandard analysis, but this does not seem to convey any substantial advantages. (One can also work in a more traditional “non-asymptotic” framework, but this requires one to keep much more careful account of various small error terms and leads to a messier argument.)

[Update, Nov 15: Corrected the attribution of the inequality (1) to Kneser instead of Kemperman.  Thanks to John Griesmer for pointing out the error.]

Joni Teräväinen and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper “Odd order cases of the logarithmically averaged Chowla conjecture“, submitted to J. Numb. Thy. Bordeaux. This paper gives an alternate route to one of the main results of our previous paper, and more specifically reproves the asymptotic

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq x} \frac{\lambda(n+h_1) \dots \lambda(n+h_k)}{n} = o(\log x) \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for all odd ${k}$ and all integers ${h_1,\dots,h_k}$ (that is to say, all the odd order cases of the logarithmically averaged Chowla conjecture). Our previous argument relies heavily on some deep ergodic theory results of Bergelson-Host-Kra, Leibman, and Le (and was applicable to more general multiplicative functions than the Liouville function ${\lambda}$); here we give a shorter proof that avoids ergodic theory (but instead requires the Gowers uniformity of the (W-tricked) von Mangoldt function, established in several papers of Ben Green, Tamar Ziegler, and myself). The proof follows the lines sketched in the previous blog post. In principle, due to the avoidance of ergodic theory, the arguments here have a greater chance to be made quantitative; however, at present the known bounds on the Gowers uniformity of the von Mangoldt function are qualitative, except at the ${U^2}$ level, which is unfortunate since the first non-trivial odd case ${k=3}$ requires quantitative control on the ${U^3}$ level. (But it may be possible to make the Gowers uniformity bounds for ${U^3}$ quantitative if one assumes GRH, although when one puts everything together, the actual decay rate obtained in (1) is likely to be poor.)

Apoorva Khare and I have updated our paper “On the sign patterns of entrywise positivity preservers in fixed dimension“, announced at this post from last month. The quantitative results are now sharpened using a new monotonicity property of ratios ${s_{\lambda}(u)/s_{\mu}(u)}$ of Schur polynomials, namely that such ratios are monotone non-decreasing in each coordinate of ${u}$ if ${u}$ is in the positive orthant, and the partition ${\lambda}$ is larger than that of ${\mu}$. (This monotonicity was also independently observed by Rachid Ait-Haddou, using the theory of blossoms.) In the revised version of the paper we give two proofs of this monotonicity. The first relies on a deep positivity result of Lam, Postnikov, and Pylyavskyy, which uses a representation-theoretic positivity result of Haiman to show that the polynomial combination

$\displaystyle s_{(\lambda \wedge \nu) / (\mu \wedge \rho)} s_{(\lambda \vee \nu) / (\mu \vee \rho)} - s_{\lambda/\mu} s_{\nu/\rho} \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

of skew-Schur polynomials is Schur-positive for any partitions ${\lambda,\mu,\nu,\rho}$ (using the convention that the skew-Schur polynomial ${s_{\lambda/\mu}}$ vanishes if ${\mu}$ is not contained in ${\lambda}$, and where ${\lambda \wedge \nu}$ and ${\lambda \vee \nu}$ denotes the pointwise min and max of ${\lambda}$ and ${\nu}$ respectively). It is fairly easy to derive the monotonicity of ${s_\lambda(u)/s_\mu(u)}$ from this, by using the expansion

$\displaystyle s_\lambda(u_1,\dots, u_n) = \sum_k u_1^k s_{\lambda/(k)}(u_2,\dots,u_n)$

of Schur polynomials into skew-Schur polynomials (as was done in this previous post).

The second proof of monotonicity avoids representation theory by a more elementary argument establishing the weaker claim that the above expression (1) is non-negative on the positive orthant. In fact we prove a more general determinantal log-supermodularity claim which may be of independent interest:

Theorem 1 Let ${A}$ be any ${n \times n}$ totally positive matrix (thus, every minor has a non-negative determinant). Then for any ${k}$-tuples ${I_1,I_2,J_1,J_2}$ of increasing elements of ${\{1,\dots,n\}}$, one has

$\displaystyle \det( A_{I_1 \wedge I_2, J_1 \wedge J_2} ) \det( A_{I_1 \vee I_2, J_1 \vee J_2} ) - \det(A_{I_1,J_1}) \det(A_{I_2,J_2}) \geq 0$

where ${A_{I,J}}$ denotes the ${k \times k}$ minor formed from the rows in ${I}$ and columns in ${J}$.

For instance, if ${A}$ is the matrix

$\displaystyle A = \begin{pmatrix} a & b & c & d \\ e & f & g & h \\ i & j & k & l \\ m & n & o & p \end{pmatrix}$

for some real numbers ${a,\dots,p}$, one has

$\displaystyle a h - de\geq 0$

(corresponding to the case ${k=1}$, ${I_1 = (1), I_2 = (2), J_1 = (4), J_2 = (1)}$), or

$\displaystyle \det \begin{pmatrix} a & c \\ i & k \end{pmatrix} \det \begin{pmatrix} f & h \\ n & p \end{pmatrix} - \det \begin{pmatrix} e & h \\ i & l \end{pmatrix} \det \begin{pmatrix} b & c \\ n & o \end{pmatrix} \geq 0$

(corresponding to the case ${k=2}$, ${I_1 = (2,3)}$, ${I_2 = (1,4)}$, ${J_1 = (1,4)}$, ${J_2 = (2,3)}$). It turns out that this claim can be proven relatively easy by an induction argument, relying on the Dodgson and Karlin identities from this previous post; the difficulties are largely notational in nature. Combining this result with the Jacobi-Trudi identity for skew-Schur polynomials (discussed in this previous post) gives the non-negativity of (1); it can also be used to directly establish the monotonicity of ratios ${s_\lambda(u)/s_\mu(u)}$ by applying the theorem to a generalised Vandermonde matrix.

(Log-supermodularity also arises as the natural hypothesis for the FKG inequality, though I do not know of any interesting application of the FKG inequality in this current setting.)

Apoorva Khare and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper “On the sign patterns of entrywise positivity preservers in fixed dimension“. This paper explores the relationship between positive definiteness of Hermitian matrices, and entrywise operations on these matrices. The starting point for this theory is the Schur product theorem, which asserts that if ${A = (a_{ij})_{1 \leq i,j \leq N}}$ and ${B = (b_{ij})_{1 \leq i,j \leq N}}$ are two ${N \times N}$ Hermitian matrices that are positive semi-definite, then their Hadamard product

$\displaystyle A \circ B := (a_{ij} b_{ij})_{1 \leq i,j \leq N}$

is also positive semi-definite. (One should caution that the Hadamard product is not the same as the usual matrix product.) To prove this theorem, first observe that the claim is easy when ${A = {\bf u} {\bf u}^*}$ and ${B = {\bf v} {\bf v}^*}$ are rank one positive semi-definite matrices, since in this case ${A \circ B = ({\bf u} \circ {\bf v}) ({\bf u} \circ {\bf v})^*}$ is also a rank one positive semi-definite matrix. The general case then follows by noting from the spectral theorem that a general positive semi-definite matrix can be expressed as a non-negative linear combination of rank one positive semi-definite matrices, and using the bilinearity of the Hadamard product and the fact that the set of positive semi-definite matrices form a convex cone. A modification of this argument also lets one replace “positive semi-definite” by “positive definite” in the statement of the Schur product theorem.

One corollary of the Schur product theorem is that any polynomial ${P(z) = c_0 + c_1 z + \dots + c_d z^d}$ with non-negative coefficients ${c_n \geq 0}$ is entrywise positivity preserving on the space ${{\mathbb P}_N({\bf C})}$ of ${N \times N}$ positive semi-definite Hermitian matrices, in the sense that for any matrix ${A = (a_{ij})_{1 \leq i,j \leq N}}$ in ${{\mathbb P}_N({\bf C})}$, the entrywise application

$\displaystyle P[A] := (P(a_{ij}))_{1 \leq i,j \leq N}$

of ${P}$ to ${A}$ is also positive semi-definite. (As before, one should caution that ${P[A]}$ is not the application ${P(A)}$ of ${P}$ to ${A}$ by the usual functional calculus.) Indeed, one can expand

$\displaystyle P[A] = c_0 A^{\circ 0} + c_1 A^{\circ 1} + \dots + c_d A^{\circ d},$

where ${A^{\circ i}}$ is the Hadamard product of ${i}$ copies of ${A}$, and the claim now follows from the Schur product theorem and the fact that ${{\mathbb P}_N({\bf C})}$ is a convex cone.

A slight variant of this argument, already observed by Pólya and Szegö in 1925, shows that if ${I}$ is any subset of ${{\bf C}}$ and

$\displaystyle f(z) = \sum_{n=0}^\infty c_n z^n \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

is a power series with non-negative coefficients ${c_n \geq 0}$ that is absolutely and uniformly convergent on ${I}$, then ${f}$ will be entrywise positivity preserving on the set ${{\mathbb P}_N(I)}$ of positive definite matrices with entries in ${I}$. (In the case that ${I}$ is of the form ${I = [0,\rho]}$, such functions are precisely the absolutely monotonic functions on ${I}$.)

In the work of Schoenberg and of Rudin, we have a converse: if ${f: (-1,1) \rightarrow {\bf C}}$ is a function that is entrywise positivity preserving on ${{\mathbb P}_N((-1,1))}$ for all ${N}$, then it must be of the form (1) with ${c_n \geq 0}$. Variants of this result, with ${(-1,1)}$ replaced by other domains, appear in the work of Horn, Vasudeva, and Guillot-Khare-Rajaratnam.

This gives a satisfactory classification of functions ${f}$ that are entrywise positivity preservers in all dimensions ${N}$ simultaneously. However, the question remains as to what happens if one fixes the dimension ${N}$, in which case one may have a larger class of entrywise positivity preservers. For instance, in the trivial case ${N=1}$, a function would be entrywise positivity preserving on ${{\mathbb P}_1((0,\rho))}$ if and only if ${f}$ is non-negative on ${I}$. For higher ${N}$, there is a necessary condition of Horn (refined slightly by Guillot-Khare-Rajaratnam) which asserts (at least in the case of smooth ${f}$) that all derivatives of ${f}$ at zero up to ${(N-1)^{th}}$ order must be non-negative in order for ${f}$ to be entrywise positivity preserving on ${{\mathbb P}_N((0,\rho))}$ for some ${0 < \rho < \infty}$. In particular, if ${f}$ is of the form (1), then ${c_0,\dots,c_{N-1}}$ must be non-negative. In fact, a stronger assertion can be made, namely that the first ${N}$ non-zero coefficients in (1) (if they exist) must be positive, or equivalently any negative term in (1) must be preceded (though not necessarily immediately) by at least ${N}$ positive terms. If ${f}$ is of the form (1) is entrywise positivity preserving on the larger set ${{\mathbb P}_N((0,+\infty))}$, one can furthermore show that any negative term in (1) must also be followed (though not necessarily immediately) by at least ${N}$ positive terms.

The main result of this paper is that these sign conditions are the only constraints for entrywise positivity preserving power series. More precisely:

Theorem 1 For each ${n}$, let ${\epsilon_n \in \{-1,0,+1\}}$ be a sign.

• Suppose that any negative sign ${\epsilon_M = -1}$ is preceded by at least ${N}$ positive signs (thus there exists ${0 \leq n_0 < \dots < n_{N-1}< M}$ with ${\epsilon_{n_0} = \dots = \epsilon_{n_{N-1}} = +1}$). Then, for any ${0 < \rho < \infty}$, there exists a convergent power series (1) on ${(0,\rho)}$, with each ${c_n}$ having the sign of ${\epsilon_n}$, which is entrywise positivity preserving on ${{\bf P}_N((0,\rho))}$.
• Suppose in addition that any negative sign ${\epsilon_M = -1}$ is followed by at least ${N}$ positive signs (thus there exists ${M < n_N < \dots < n_{2N-1}}$ with ${\epsilon_{n_N} = \dots = \epsilon_{n_{2N-1}} = +1}$). Then there exists a convergent power series (1) on ${(0,+\infty)}$, with each ${c_n}$ having the sign of ${\epsilon_n}$, which is entrywise positivity preserving on ${{\bf P}_N((0,+\infty))}$.

One can ask the same question with ${(0,\rho)}$ or ${(0,+\infty)}$ replaced by other domains such as ${(-\rho,\rho)}$, or the complex disk ${D(0,\rho)}$, but it turns out that there are far fewer entrywise positivity preserving functions in those cases basically because of the non-trivial zeroes of Schur polynomials in these ranges; see the paper for further discussion. We also have some quantitative bounds on how negative some of the coefficients can be compared to the positive coefficients, but they are a bit technical to state here.

The heart of the proofs of these results is an analysis of the determinants ${\mathrm{det} P[ {\bf u} {\bf u}^* ]}$ of polynomials ${P}$ applied entrywise to rank one matrices ${uu^*}$; the positivity of these determinants can be used (together with a continuity argument) to establish the positive definiteness of ${P[uu^*]}$ for various ranges of ${P}$ and ${u}$. Using the Cauchy-Binet formula, one can rewrite such determinants as linear combinations of squares of magnitudes of generalised Vandermonde determinants

$\displaystyle \mathrm{det}( u_i^{n_j} )_{1 \leq i,j \leq N},$

where ${{\bf u} = (u_1,\dots,u_N)}$ and the signs of the coefficients in the linear combination are determined by the signs of the coefficients of ${P}$. The task is then to find upper and lower bounds for the magnitudes of such generalised Vandermonde determinants. These determinants oscillate in sign, which makes the problem look difficult; however, an algebraic miracle intervenes, namely the factorisation

$\displaystyle \mathrm{det}( u_i^{n_j} )_{1 \leq i,j \leq N} = \pm V({\bf u}) s_\lambda({\bf u})$

of the generalised Vandermonde determinant into the ordinary Vandermonde determinant

$\displaystyle V({\bf u}) = \prod_{1 \leq i < j \leq N} (u_j - u_i)$

and a Schur polynomial ${s_\lambda}$ applied to ${{\bf u}}$, where the weight ${\lambda}$ of the Schur polynomial is determined by ${n_1,\dots,n_N}$ in a simple fashion. The problem then boils down to obtaining upper and lower bounds for these Schur polynomials. Because we are restricting attention to matrices taking values in ${(0,\rho)}$ or ${(0,+\infty)}$, the entries of ${{\bf u}}$ can be taken to be non-negative. One can then take advantage of the total positivity of the Schur polynomials to compare these polynomials with a monomial, at which point one can obtain good criteria for ${P[A]}$ to be positive definite when ${A}$ is a rank one positive definite matrix ${A = {\bf u} {\bf u}^*}$.

If we allow the exponents ${n_1,\dots,n_N}$ to be real numbers rather than integers (thus replacing polynomials or power series by Pusieux series or Hahn series), then we lose the above algebraic miracle, but we can replace it with a geometric miracle, namely the Harish-Chandra-Itzykson-Zuber identity, which I discussed in this previous blog post. This factors the above generalised Vandermonde determinant as the product of the ordinary Vandermonde determinant and an integral of a positive quantity over the orthogonal group, which one can again compare with a monomial after some fairly elementary estimates.

It remains to understand what happens for more general positive semi-definite matrices ${A}$. Here we use a trick of FitzGerald and Horn to amplify the rank one case to the general case, by expressing a general positive semi-definite matrix ${A}$ as a linear combination of a rank one matrix ${{\bf u} {\bf u}^*}$ and another positive semi-definite matrix ${B}$ that vanishes on the last row and column (and is thus effectively a positive definite ${N-1 \times N-1}$ matrix). Using the fundamental theorem of calculus to continuously deform the rank one matrix ${{\bf u} {\bf u}^*}$ to ${A}$ in the direction ${B}$, one can then obtain positivity results for ${P[A]}$ from positivity results for ${P[{\bf u} {\bf u}^*]}$ combined with an induction hypothesis on ${N}$.

Joni Teräväinen and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper “The structure of logarithmically averaged correlations of multiplicative functions, with applications to the Chowla and Elliott conjectures“, submitted to Duke Mathematical Journal. This paper builds upon my previous paper in which I introduced an “entropy decrement method” to prove the two-point (logarithmically averaged) cases of the Chowla and Elliott conjectures. A bit more specifically, I showed that

$\displaystyle \lim_{m \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log \omega_m} \sum_{x_m/\omega_m \leq n \leq x_m} \frac{g_0(n+h_0) g_1(n+h_1)}{n} = 0$

whenever ${1 \leq \omega_m \leq x_m}$ were sequences going to infinity, ${h_0,h_1}$ were distinct integers, and ${g_0,g_1: {\bf N} \rightarrow {\bf C}}$ were ${1}$-bounded multiplicative functions which were non-pretentious in the sense that

$\displaystyle \liminf_{X \rightarrow \infty} \inf_{|t_j| \leq X} \sum_{p \leq X} \frac{1-\mathrm{Re}( g_j(p) \overline{\chi_j}(p) p^{it_j})}{p} = \infty \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for all Dirichlet characters ${\chi_j}$ and for ${j=0,1}$. Thus, for instance, one had the logarithmically averaged two-point Chowla conjecture

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq x} \frac{\lambda(n) \lambda(n+h)}{n} = o(\log x)$

for fixed any non-zero ${h}$, where ${\lambda}$ was the Liouville function.

One would certainly like to extend these results to higher order correlations than the two-point correlations. This looks to be difficult (though perhaps not completely impossible if one allows for logarithmic averaging): in a previous paper I showed that achieving this in the context of the Liouville function would be equivalent to resolving the logarithmically averaged Sarnak conjecture, as well as establishing logarithmically averaged local Gowers uniformity of the Liouville function. However, in this paper we are able to avoid having to resolve these difficult conjectures to obtain partial results towards the (logarithmically averaged) Chowla and Elliott conjecture. For the Chowla conjecture, we can obtain all odd order correlations, in that

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq x} \frac{\lambda(n+h_1) \dots \lambda(n+h_k)}{n} = o(\log x) \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

for all odd ${k}$ and all integers ${h_1,\dots,h_k}$ (which, in the odd order case, are no longer required to be distinct). (Superficially, this looks like we have resolved “half of the cases” of the logarithmically averaged Chowla conjecture; but it seems the odd order correlations are significantly easier than the even order ones. For instance, because of the Katai-Bourgain-Sarnak-Ziegler criterion, one can basically deduce the odd order cases of (2) from the even order cases (after allowing for some dilations in the argument ${n}$).

For the more general Elliott conjecture, we can show that

$\displaystyle \lim_{m \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log \omega_m} \sum_{x_m/\omega_m \leq n \leq x_m} \frac{g_1(n+h_1) \dots g_k(n+h_k)}{n} = 0$

for any ${k}$, any integers ${h_1,\dots,h_k}$ and any bounded multiplicative functions ${g_1,\dots,g_k}$, unless the product ${g_1 \dots g_k}$ weakly pretends to be a Dirichlet character ${\chi}$ in the sense that

$\displaystyle \sum_{p \leq X} \frac{1 - \hbox{Re}( g_1 \dots g_k(p) \overline{\chi}(p)}{p} = o(\log\log X).$

This can be seen to imply (2) as a special case. Even when ${g_1,\dots,g_k}$ does pretend to be a Dirichlet character ${\chi}$, we can still say something: if the limits

$\displaystyle f(a) := \lim_{m \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log \omega_m} \sum_{x_m/\omega_m \leq n \leq x_m} \frac{g_1(n+ah_1) \dots g_k(n+ah_k)}{n}$

exist for each ${a \in {\bf Z}}$ (which can be guaranteed if we pass to a suitable subsequence), then ${f}$ is the uniform limit of periodic functions ${f_i}$, each of which is ${\chi}$isotypic in the sense that ${f_i(ab) = f_i(a) \chi(b)}$ whenever ${a,b}$ are integers with ${b}$ coprime to the periods of ${\chi}$ and ${f_i}$. This does not pin down the value of any single correlation ${f(a)}$, but does put significant constraints on how these correlations may vary with ${a}$.

Among other things, this allows us to show that all ${16}$ possible length four sign patterns ${(\lambda(n+1),\dots,\lambda(n+4)) \in \{-1,+1\}^4}$ of the Liouville function occur with positive density, and all ${65}$ possible length four sign patterns ${(\mu(n+1),\dots,\mu(n+4)) \in \{-1,0,+1\}^4 \backslash \{-1,+1\}^4}$ occur with the conjectured logarithmic density. (In a previous paper with Matomaki and Radziwill, we obtained comparable results for length three patterns of Liouville and length two patterns of Möbius.)

To describe the argument, let us focus for simplicity on the case of the Liouville correlations

$\displaystyle f(a) := \lim_{X \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log X} \sum_{n \leq X} \frac{\lambda(n) \lambda(n+a) \dots \lambda(n+(k-1)a)}{n}, \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

assuming for sake of discussion that all limits exist. (In the paper, we instead use the device of generalised limits, as discussed in this previous post.) The idea is to combine together two rather different ways to control this function ${f}$. The first proceeds by the entropy decrement method mentioned earlier, which roughly speaking works as follows. Firstly, we pick a prime ${p}$ and observe that ${\lambda(pn)=-\lambda(n)}$ for any ${n}$, which allows us to rewrite (3) as

$\displaystyle (-1)^k f(a) = \lim_{X \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log X}$

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} \frac{\lambda(pn) \lambda(pn+ap) \dots \lambda(pn+(k-1)ap)}{n}.$

Making the change of variables ${n' = pn}$, we obtain

$\displaystyle (-1)^k f(a) = \lim_{X \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log X}$

$\displaystyle \sum_{n' \leq pX} \frac{\lambda(n') \lambda(n'+ap) \dots \lambda(n'+(k-1)ap)}{n'} p 1_{p|n'}.$

The difference between ${n' \leq pX}$ and ${n' \leq X}$ is negligible in the limit (here is where we crucially rely on the log-averaging), hence

$\displaystyle (-1)^k f(a) = \lim_{X \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log X} \sum_{n \leq X} \frac{\lambda(n) \lambda(n+ap) \dots \lambda(n+(k-1)ap)}{n} p 1_{p|n}$

and thus by (3) we have

$\displaystyle (-1)^k f(a) = f(ap) + \lim_{X \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{\log X}$

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} \frac{\lambda(n) \lambda(n+ap) \dots \lambda(n+(k-1)ap)}{n} (p 1_{p|n}-1).$

The entropy decrement argument can be used to show that the latter limit is small for most ${p}$ (roughly speaking, this is because the factors ${p 1_{p|n}-1}$ behave like independent random variables as ${p}$ varies, so that concentration of measure results such as Hoeffding’s inequality can apply, after using entropy inequalities to decouple somewhat these random variables from the ${\lambda}$ factors). We thus obtain the approximate isotopy property

$\displaystyle (-1)^k f(a) \approx f(ap) \ \ \ \ \ (4)$

for most ${a}$ and ${p}$.

On the other hand, by the Furstenberg correspondence principle (as discussed in these previous posts), it is possible to express ${f(a)}$ as a multiple correlation

$\displaystyle f(a) = \int_X g(x) g(T^a x) \dots g(T^{(k-1)a} x)\ d\mu(x)$

for some probability space ${(X,\mu)}$ equipped with a measure-preserving invertible map ${T: X \rightarrow X}$. Using results of Bergelson-Host-Kra, Leibman, and Le, this allows us to obtain a decomposition of the form

$\displaystyle f(a) = f_1(a) + f_2(a) \ \ \ \ \ (5)$

where ${f_1}$ is a nilsequence, and ${f_2}$ goes to zero in density (even along the primes, or constant multiples of the primes). The original work of Bergelson-Host-Kra required ergodicity on ${X}$, which is very definitely a hypothesis that is not available here; however, the later work of Leibman removed this hypothesis, and the work of Le refined the control on ${f_1}$ so that one still has good control when restricting to primes, or constant multiples of primes.

Ignoring the small error ${f_2(a)}$, we can now combine (5) to conclude that

$\displaystyle f(a) \approx (-1)^k f_1(ap).$

Using the equidistribution theory of nilsequences (as developed in this previous paper of Ben Green and myself), one can break up ${f_1}$ further into a periodic piece ${f_0}$ and an “irrational” or “minor arc” piece ${f_3}$. The contribution of the minor arc piece ${f_3}$ can be shown to mostly cancel itself out after dilating by primes ${p}$ and averaging, thanks to Vinogradov-type bilinear sum estimates (transferred to the primes). So we end up with

$\displaystyle f(a) \approx (-1)^k f_0(ap),$

which already shows (heuristically, at least) the claim that ${f}$ can be approximated by periodic functions ${f_0}$ which are isotopic in the sense that

$\displaystyle f_0(a) \approx (-1)^k f_0(ap).$

But if ${k}$ is odd, one can use Dirichlet’s theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions to restrict to primes ${p}$ that are ${1}$ modulo the period of ${f_0}$, and conclude now that ${f_0}$ vanishes identically, which (heuristically, at least) gives (2).

The same sort of argument works to give the more general bounds on correlations of bounded multiplicative functions. But for the specific task of proving (2), we initially used a slightly different argument that avoids using the ergodic theory machinery of Bergelson-Host-Kra, Leibman, and Le, but replaces it instead with the Gowers uniformity norm theory used to count linear equations in primes. Basically, by averaging (4) in ${p}$ using the “${W}$-trick”, as well as known facts about the Gowers uniformity of the von Mangoldt function, one can obtain an approximation of the form

$\displaystyle (-1)^k f(a) \approx {\bf E}_{b: (b,W)=1} f(ab)$

where ${b}$ ranges over a large range of integers coprime to some primorial ${W = \prod_{p \leq w} p}$. On the other hand, by iterating (4) we have

$\displaystyle f(a) \approx f(apq)$

for most semiprimes ${pq}$, and by again averaging over semiprimes one can obtain an approximation of the form

$\displaystyle f(a) \approx {\bf E}_{b: (b,W)=1} f(ab).$

For ${k}$ odd, one can combine the two approximations to conclude that ${f(a)=0}$. (This argument is not given in the current paper, but we plan to detail it in a subsequent one.)

I’ve just uploaded to the arXiv my paper “On the universality of the incompressible Euler equation on compact manifolds“, submitted to Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems. This is a variant of my recent paper on the universality of potential well dynamics, but instead of trying to embed dynamical systems into a potential well ${\partial_{tt} u = -\nabla V(u)}$, here we try to embed dynamical systems into the incompressible Euler equations

$\displaystyle \partial_t u + \nabla_u u = - \mathrm{grad}_g p \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

$\displaystyle \mathrm{div}_g u = 0$

on a Riemannian manifold ${(M,g)}$. (One is particularly interested in the case of flat manifolds ${M}$, particularly ${{\bf R}^3}$ or ${({\bf R}/{\bf Z})^3}$, but for the main result of this paper it is essential that one is permitted to consider curved manifolds.) This system, first studied by Ebin and Marsden, is the natural generalisation of the usual incompressible Euler equations to curved space; it can be viewed as the formal geodesic flow equation on the infinite-dimensional manifold of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms on ${M}$ (see this previous post for a discussion of this in the flat space case).

The Euler equations can be viewed as a nonlinear equation in which the nonlinearity is a quadratic function of the velocity field ${u}$. It is thus natural to compare the Euler equations with quadratic ODE of the form

$\displaystyle \partial_t y = B(y,y) \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

where ${y: {\bf R} \rightarrow {\bf R}^n}$ is the unknown solution, and ${B: {\bf R}^n \times {\bf R}^n \rightarrow {\bf R}^n}$ is a bilinear map, which we may assume without loss of generality to be symmetric. One can ask whether such an ODE may be linearly embedded into the Euler equations on some Riemannian manifold ${(M,g)}$, which means that there is an injective linear map ${U: {\bf R}^n \rightarrow \Gamma(TM)}$ from ${{\bf R}^n}$ to smooth vector fields on ${M}$, as well as a bilinear map ${P: {\bf R}^n \times {\bf R}^n \rightarrow C^\infty(M)}$ to smooth scalar fields on ${M}$, such that the map ${y \mapsto (U(y), P(y,y))}$ takes solutions to (2) to solutions to (1), or equivalently that

$\displaystyle U(B(y,y)) + \nabla_{U(y)} U(y) = - \mathrm{grad}_g P(y,y)$

$\displaystyle \mathrm{div}_g U(y) = 0$

for all ${y \in {\bf R}^n}$.

For simplicity let us restrict ${M}$ to be compact. There is an obvious necessary condition for this embeddability to occur, which comes from energy conservation law for the Euler equations; unpacking everything, this implies that the bilinear form ${B}$ in (2) has to obey a cancellation condition

$\displaystyle \langle B(y,y), y \rangle = 0 \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

for some positive definite inner product ${\langle, \rangle: {\bf R}^n \times {\bf R}^n \rightarrow {\bf R}}$ on ${{\bf R}^n}$. The main result of the paper is the converse to this statement: if ${B}$ is a symmetric bilinear form obeying a cancellation condition (3), then it is possible to embed the equations (2) into the Euler equations (1) on some Riemannian manifold ${(M,g)}$; the catch is that this manifold will depend on the form ${B}$ and on the dimension ${n}$ (in fact in the construction I have, ${M}$ is given explicitly as ${SO(n) \times ({\bf R}/{\bf Z})^{n+1}}$, with a funny metric on it that depends on ${B}$).

As a consequence, any finite dimensional portion of the usual “dyadic shell models” used as simplified toy models of the Euler equation, can actually be embedded into a genuine Euler equation, albeit on a high-dimensional and curved manifold. This includes portions of the self-similar “machine” I used in a previous paper to establish finite time blowup for an averaged version of the Navier-Stokes (or Euler) equations. Unfortunately, the result in this paper does not apply to infinite-dimensional ODE, so I cannot yet establish finite time blowup for the Euler equations on a (well-chosen) manifold. It does not seem so far beyond the realm of possibility, though, that this could be done in the relatively near future. In particular, the result here suggests that one could construct something resembling a universal Turing machine within an Euler flow on a manifold, which was one ingredient I would need to engineer such a finite time blowup.

The proof of the main theorem proceeds by an “elimination of variables” strategy that was used in some of my previous papers in this area, though in this particular case the Nash embedding theorem (or variants thereof) are not required. The first step is to lessen the dependence on the metric ${g}$ by partially reformulating the Euler equations (1) in terms of the covelocity ${g \cdot u}$ (which is a ${1}$-form) instead of the velocity ${u}$. Using the freedom to modify the dimension of the underlying manifold ${M}$, one can also decouple the metric ${g}$ from the volume form that is used to obtain the divergence-free condition. At this point the metric can be eliminated, with a certain positive definiteness condition between the velocity and covelocity taking its place. After a substantial amount of trial and error (motivated by some “two-and-a-half-dimensional” reductions of the three-dimensional Euler equations, and also by playing around with a number of variants of the classic “separation of variables” strategy), I eventually found an ansatz for the velocity and covelocity that automatically solved most of the components of the Euler equations (as well as most of the positive definiteness requirements), as long as one could find a number of scalar fields that obeyed a certain nonlinear system of transport equations, and also obeyed a positive definiteness condition. Here I was stuck for a bit because the system I ended up with was overdetermined – more equations than unknowns. After trying a number of special cases I eventually found a solution to the transport system on the sphere, except that the scalar functions sometimes degenerated and so the positive definiteness property I wanted was only obeyed with positive semi-definiteness. I tried for some time to perturb this example into a strictly positive definite solution before eventually working out that this was not possible. Finally I had the brainwave to lift the solution from the sphere to an even more symmetric space, and this quickly led to the final solution of the problem, using the special orthogonal group rather than the sphere as the underlying domain. The solution ended up being rather simple in form, but it is still somewhat miraculous to me that it exists at all; in retrospect, given the overdetermined nature of the problem, relying on a large amount of symmetry to cut down the number of equations was basically the only hope.

I’ve just uploaded to the arXiv my paper “On the universality of potential well dynamics“, submitted to Dynamics of PDE. This is a spinoff from my previous paper on blowup of nonlinear wave equations, inspired by some conversations with Sungjin Oh. Here we focus mainly on the zero-dimensional case of such equations, namely the potential well equation

$\displaystyle \partial_{tt} u = - (\nabla F)(u) \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for a particle ${u: {\bf R} \rightarrow {\bf R}^m}$ trapped in a potential well with potential ${F: {\bf R}^m \rightarrow {\bf R}}$, with ${F(z) \rightarrow +\infty}$ as ${z \rightarrow \infty}$. This ODE always admits global solutions from arbitrary initial positions ${u(0)}$ and initial velocities ${\partial_t u(0)}$, thanks to conservation of the Hamiltonian ${\frac{1}{2} |\partial_t u|^2 + F(u)}$. As this Hamiltonian is coercive (in that its level sets are compact), solutions to this equation are always almost periodic. On the other hand, as can already be seen using the harmonic oscillator ${\partial_{tt} u = - k^2 u}$ (and direct sums of this system), this equation can generate periodic solutions, as well as quasiperiodic solutions.

All quasiperiodic motions are almost periodic. However, there are many examples of dynamical systems that admit solutions that are almost periodic but not quasiperiodic. So one can pose the question: are the dynamics of potential wells universal in the sense that they can capture all almost periodic solutions?

A precise question can be phrased as follows. Let ${M}$ be a compact manifold, and let ${X}$ be a smooth vector field on ${M}$; to avoid degeneracies, let us take ${X}$ to be non-singular in the sense that it is everywhere non-vanishing. Then the trajectories of the first-order ODE

$\displaystyle \partial_t u = X(u) \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

for ${u: {\bf R} \rightarrow M}$ are always global and almost periodic. Can we then find a (coercive) potential ${F: {\bf R}^m \rightarrow {\bf R}}$ for some ${m}$, as well as a smooth embedding ${\phi: M \rightarrow {\bf R}^m}$, such that every solution ${u}$ to (2) pushes forward under ${\phi}$ to a solution to (1)? (Actually, for technical reasons it is preferable to map into the phase space ${{\bf R}^m \times {\bf R}^m}$, rather than position space ${{\bf R}^m}$, but let us ignore this detail for this discussion.)

It turns out that the answer is no; there is a very specific obstruction. Given a pair ${(M,X)}$ as above, define a strongly adapted ${1}$-form to be a ${1}$-form ${\phi}$ on ${M}$ such that ${\phi(X)}$ is pointwise positive, and the Lie derivative ${{\mathcal L}_X \phi}$ is an exact ${1}$-form. We then have

Theorem 1 A smooth compact non-singular dynamics ${(M,X)}$ can be embedded smoothly in a potential well system if and only if it admits a strongly adapted ${1}$-form.

For the “only if” direction, the key point is that potential wells (viewed as a Hamiltonian flow on the phase space ${{\bf R}^m \times {\bf R}^m}$) admit a strongly adapted ${1}$-form, namely the canonical ${1}$-form ${p dq}$, whose Lie derivative is the derivative ${dL}$ of the Lagrangian ${L := \frac{1}{2} |\partial_t u|^2 - F(u)}$ and is thus exact. The converse “if” direction is mainly a consequence of the Nash embedding theorem, and follows the arguments used in my previous paper.

Interestingly, the same obstruction also works for potential wells in a more general Riemannian manifold than ${{\bf R}^m}$, or for nonlinear wave equations with a potential; combining the two, the obstruction is also present for wave maps with a potential.

It is then natural to ask whether this obstruction is non-trivial, in the sense that there are at least some examples of dynamics ${(M,X)}$ that do not support strongly adapted ${1}$-forms (and hence cannot be modeled smoothly by the dynamics of a potential well, nonlinear wave equation, or wave maps). I posed this question on MathOverflow, and Robert Bryant provided a very nice construction, showing that the vector field ${(\sin(2\pi x), \cos(2\pi x))}$ on the ${2}$-torus ${({\bf R}/{\bf Z})^2}$ had no strongly adapted ${1}$-forms, and hence the dynamics of this vector field cannot be smoothly reproduced by a potential well, nonlinear wave equation, or wave map:

On the other hand, the suspension of any diffeomorphism does support a strongly adapted ${1}$-form (the derivative ${dt}$ of the time coordinate), and using this and the previous theorem I was able to embed a universal Turing machine into a potential well. In particular, there are flows for an explicitly describable potential well whose trajectories have behavior that is undecidable using the usual ZFC axioms of set theory! So potential well dynamics are “effectively” universal, despite the presence of the aforementioned obstruction.

In my previous work on blowup for Navier-Stokes like equations, I speculated that if one could somehow replicate a universal Turing machine within the Euler equations, one could use this machine to create a “von Neumann machine” that replicated smaller versions of itself, which on iteration would lead to a finite time blowup. Now that such a mechanism is present in nonlinear wave equations, it is tempting to try to make this scheme work in that setting. Of course, in my previous paper I had already demonstrated finite time blowup, at least in a three-dimensional setting, but that was a relatively simple discretely self-similar blowup in which no computation occurred. This more complicated blowup scheme would be significantly more effort to set up, but would be proof-of-concept that the same scheme would in principle be possible for the Navier-Stokes equations, assuming somehow that one can embed a universal Turing machine into the Euler equations. (But I’m still hopelessly stuck on how to accomplish this latter task…)

Kaisa Matomaki, Maksym Radziwill, and I have uploaded to the arXiv our paper “Correlations of the von Mangoldt and higher divisor functions I. Long shift ranges“, submitted to Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. This paper is concerned with the estimation of correlations such as

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) \Lambda(n+h) \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for medium-sized ${h}$ and large ${X}$, where ${\Lambda}$ is the von Mangoldt function; we also consider variants of this sum in which one of the von Mangoldt functions is replaced with a (higher order) divisor function, but for sake of discussion let us focus just on the sum (1). Understanding this sum is very closely related to the problem of finding pairs of primes that differ by ${h}$; for instance, if one could establish a lower bound

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) \Lambda(n+2) \gg X$

then this would easily imply the twin prime conjecture.

The (first) Hardy-Littlewood conjecture asserts an asymptotic

$\displaystyle \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) \Lambda(n+h) = {\mathfrak S}(h) X + o(X) \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

as ${X \rightarrow \infty}$ for any fixed positive ${h}$, where the singular series ${{\mathfrak S}(h)}$ is an arithmetic factor arising from the irregularity of distribution of ${\Lambda}$ at small moduli, defined explicitly by

$\displaystyle {\mathfrak S}(h) := 2 \Pi_2 \prod_{p|h; p>2} \frac{p-2}{p-1}$

when ${h}$ is even, and ${{\mathfrak S}(h)=0}$ when ${h}$ is odd, where

$\displaystyle \Pi_2 := \prod_{p>2} (1-\frac{1}{(p-1)^2}) = 0.66016\dots$

is (half of) the twin prime constant. See for instance this previous blog post for a a heuristic explanation of this conjecture. From the previous discussion we see that (2) for ${h=2}$ would imply the twin prime conjecture. Sieve theoretic methods are only able to provide an upper bound of the form ${ \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) \Lambda(n+h) \ll {\mathfrak S}(h) X}$.

Needless to say, apart from the trivial case of odd ${h}$, there are no values of ${h}$ for which the Hardy-Littlewood conjecture is known. However there are some results that say that this conjecture holds “on the average”: in particular, if ${H}$ is a quantity depending on ${X}$ that is somewhat large, there are results that show that (2) holds for most (i.e. for ${1-o(1)}$) of the ${h}$ betwen ${0}$ and ${H}$. Ideally one would like to get ${H}$ as small as possible, in particular one can view the full Hardy-Littlewood conjecture as the endpoint case when ${H}$ is bounded.

The first results in this direction were by van der Corput and by Lavrik, who established such a result with ${H = X}$ (with a subsequent refinement by Balog); Wolke lowered ${H}$ to ${X^{5/8+\varepsilon}}$, and Mikawa lowered ${H}$ further to ${X^{1/3+\varepsilon}}$. The main result of this paper is a further lowering of ${H}$ to ${X^{8/33+\varepsilon}}$. In fact (as in the preceding works) we get a better error term than ${o(X)}$, namely an error of the shape ${O_A( X \log^{-A} X)}$ for any ${A}$.

Our arguments initially proceed along standard lines. One can use the Hardy-Littlewood circle method to express the correlation in (2) as an integral involving exponential sums ${S(\alpha) := \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) e(\alpha n)}$. The contribution of “major arc” ${\alpha}$ is known by a standard computation to recover the main term ${{\mathfrak S}(h) X}$ plus acceptable errors, so it is a matter of controlling the “minor arcs”. After averaging in ${h}$ and using the Plancherel identity, one is basically faced with establishing a bound of the form

$\displaystyle \int_{\beta-1/H}^{\beta+1/H} |S(\alpha)|^2\ d\alpha \ll_A X \log^{-A} X$

for any “minor arc” ${\beta}$. If ${\beta}$ is somewhat close to a low height rational ${a/q}$ (specifically, if it is within ${X^{-1/6-\varepsilon}}$ of such a rational with ${q = O(\log^{O(1)} X)}$), then this type of estimate is roughly of comparable strength (by another application of Plancherel) to the best available prime number theorem in short intervals on the average, namely that the prime number theorem holds for most intervals of the form ${[x, x + x^{1/6+\varepsilon}]}$, and we can handle this case using standard mean value theorems for Dirichlet series. So we can restrict attention to the “strongly minor arc” case where ${\beta}$ is far from such rationals.

The next step (following some ideas we found in a paper of Zhan) is to rewrite this estimate not in terms of the exponential sums ${S(\alpha) := \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) e(\alpha n)}$, but rather in terms of the Dirichlet polynomial ${F(s) := \sum_{n \sim X} \frac{\Lambda(n)}{n^s}}$. After a certain amount of computation (including some oscillatory integral estimates arising from stationary phase), one is eventually reduced to the task of establishing an estimate of the form

$\displaystyle \int_{t \sim \lambda X} (\sum_{t-\lambda H}^{t+\lambda H} |F(\frac{1}{2}+it')|\ dt')^2\ dt \ll_A \lambda^2 H^2 X \log^{-A} X$

for any ${X^{-1/6-\varepsilon} \ll \lambda \ll \log^{-B} X}$ (with ${B}$ sufficiently large depending on ${A}$).

The next step, which is again standard, is the use of the Heath-Brown identity (as discussed for instance in this previous blog post) to split up ${\Lambda}$ into a number of components that have a Dirichlet convolution structure. Because the exponent ${8/33}$ we are shooting for is less than ${1/4}$, we end up with five types of components that arise, which we call “Type ${d_1}$“, “Type ${d_2}$“, “Type ${d_3}$“, “Type ${d_4}$“, and “Type II”. The “Type II” sums are Dirichlet convolutions involving a factor supported on a range ${[X^\varepsilon, X^{-\varepsilon} H]}$ and is quite easy to deal with; the “Type ${d_j}$” terms are Dirichlet convolutions that resemble (non-degenerate portions of) the ${j^{th}}$ divisor function, formed from convolving together ${j}$ portions of ${1}$. The “Type ${d_1}$” and “Type ${d_2}$” terms can be estimated satisfactorily by standard moment estimates for Dirichlet polynomials; this already recovers the result of Mikawa (and our argument is in fact slightly more elementary in that no Kloosterman sum estimates are required). It is the treatment of the “Type ${d_3}$” and “Type ${d_4}$” sums that require some new analysis, with the Type ${d_3}$ terms turning to be the most delicate. After using an existing moment estimate of Jutila for Dirichlet L-functions, matters reduce to obtaining a family of estimates, a typical one of which (relating to the more difficult Type ${d_3}$ sums) is of the form

$\displaystyle \int_{t - H}^{t+H} |M( \frac{1}{2} + it')|^2\ dt' \ll X^{\varepsilon^2} H \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

for “typical” ordinates ${t}$ of size ${X}$, where ${M}$ is the Dirichlet polynomial ${M(s) := \sum_{n \sim X^{1/3}} \frac{1}{n^s}}$ (a fragment of the Riemann zeta function). The precise definition of “typical” is a little technical (because of the complicated nature of Jutila’s estimate) and will not be detailed here. Such a claim would follow easily from the Lindelof hypothesis (which would imply that ${M(1/2 + it) \ll X^{o(1)}}$) but of course we would like to have an unconditional result.

At this point, having exhausted all the Dirichlet polynomial estimates that are usefully available, we return to “physical space”. Using some further Fourier-analytic and oscillatory integral computations, we can estimate the left-hand side of (3) by an expression that is roughly of the shape

$\displaystyle \frac{H}{X^{1/3}} \sum_{\ell \sim X^{1/3}/H} |\sum_{m \sim X^{1/3}} e( \frac{t}{2\pi} \log \frac{m+\ell}{m-\ell} )|.$

The phase ${\frac{t}{2\pi} \log \frac{m+\ell}{m-\ell}}$ can be Taylor expanded as the sum of ${\frac{t_j \ell}{\pi m}}$ and a lower order term ${\frac{t_j \ell^3}{3\pi m^3}}$, plus negligible errors. If we could discard the lower order term then we would get quite a good bound using the exponential sum estimates of Robert and Sargos, which control averages of exponential sums with purely monomial phases, with the averaging allowing us to exploit the hypothesis that ${t}$ is “typical”. Figuring out how to get rid of this lower order term caused some inefficiency in our arguments; the best we could do (after much experimentation) was to use Fourier analysis to shorten the sums, estimate a one-parameter average exponential sum with a binomial phase by a two-parameter average with a monomial phase, and then use the van der Corput ${B}$ process followed by the estimates of Robert and Sargos. This rather complicated procedure works up to ${H = X^{8/33+\varepsilon}}$ it may be possible that some alternate way to proceed here could improve the exponent somewhat.

In a sequel to this paper, we will use a somewhat different method to reduce ${H}$ to a much smaller value of ${\log^{O(1)} X}$, but only if we replace the correlations ${\sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) \Lambda(n+h)}$ by either ${\sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) d_k(n+h)}$ or ${\sum_{n \leq X} d_k(n) d_l(n+h)}$, and also we now only save a ${o(1)}$ in the error term rather than ${O_A(\log^{-A} X)}$.

In July I will be spending a week at Park City, being one of the mini-course lecturers in the Graduate Summer School component of the Park City Summer Session on random matrices.  I have chosen to give some lectures on least singular values of random matrices, the circular law, and the Lindeberg exchange method in random matrix theory; this is a slightly different set of topics than I had initially advertised (which was instead about the Lindeberg exchange method and the local relaxation flow method), but after consulting with the other mini-course lecturers I felt that this would be a more complementary set of topics.  I have uploaded an draft of my lecture notes (some portion of which is derived from my monograph on the subject); as always, comments and corrections are welcome.

[Update, June 23: notes revised and reformatted to PCMI format. -T.]

[Update, Mar 19 2018: further revision. -T.]