On almost universal mixed sums of squares and triangular numbers

In 1997 K. Ono and K. Soundararajan [Invent. Math. 130(1997)] proved that under the generalized Riemann hypothesis any positive odd integer greater than 2719 can be represented by the famous Ramanujan form $x^2+y^2+10z^2$, equivalently the form $2x^2+5y^2+4T_z$ represents all integers greater than 1359, where $T_z$ denotes the triangular number $z(z+1)/2$. Given positive integers $a,b,c$ we employ modular forms and the theory of quadratic forms to determine completely when the general form $ax^2+by^2+cT_z$ represents sufficiently large integers and establish similar results for the forms $ax^2+bT_y+cT_z$ and $aT_x+bT_y+cT_z$. Here are some consequences of our main theorems: (i) All sufficiently large odd numbers have the form $2ax^2+y^2+z^2$ if and only if all prime divisors of $a$ are congruent to 1 modulo 4. (ii) The form $ax^2+y^2+T_z$ is almost universal (i.e., it represents sufficiently large integers) if and only if each odd prime divisor of $a$ is congruent to 1 or 3 modulo 8. (iii) $ax^2+T_y+T_z$ is almost universal if and only if all odd prime divisors of $a$ are congruent to 1 modulo 4. (iv) When $v_2(a)\not=3$, the form $aT_x+T_y+T_z$ is almost universal if and only if all odd prime divisors of $a$ are congruent to 1 modulo 4 and $v_2(a)\not=5,7,...$, where $v_2(a)$ is the 2-adic order of $a$.Comment: 35 page

Dihedral Gauss hypergeometric functions

Gauss hypergeometric functions with a dihedral monodromy group can be expressed as elementary functions, since their hypergeometric equations can be transformed to Fuchsian equations with cyclic monodromy groups by a quadratic change of the argument variable. The paper presents general elementary expressions of these dihedral hypergeometric functions, involving finite bivariate sums expressible as terminating Appell's F2 or F3 series. Additionally, trigonometric expressions for the dihedral functions are presented, and degenerate cases (logarithmic, or with the monodromy group Z/2Z) are considered.Comment: 28 pages; trigonometric expressions added; transformations and invariants moved to arxiv.org/1101.368

Linear Congruences with Ratios

We use new bounds of double exponential sums with ratios of integers from prescribed intervals to get an asymptotic formula for the number of solutions to congruences $$\sum_{j=1}^n a_j x_jy_j^{-1} \equiv a_0 \pmod p,$$ with variables from rather general sets

On Congruences with Products of Variables from Short Intervals and Applications

We obtain upper bounds on the number of solutions to congruences of the type $$(x_1+s)...(x_{\nu}+s)\equiv (y_1+s)...(y_{\nu}+s)\not\equiv0 \pmod p$$ modulo a prime $p$ with variables from some short intervals. We give some applications of our results and in particular improve several recent estimates of J. Cilleruelo and M. Z. Garaev on exponential congruences and on cardinalities of products of short intervals, some double character sum estimates of J. B. Friedlander and H. Iwaniec and some results of M.-C. Chang and A. A. Karatsuba on character sums twisted with the divisor function