Additive functions and the largest prime factor of integers (Q1262890)

Let P(n) denote the largest prime factor of an integer \(n\geq 2\) and A(n) the sum of the prime factor of n. The reviewer and \textit{P. Erdős} showed that \[ \sum_{n\leq x}P(n)\sim \sum_{n\leq x}A(n)\sim \pi^ 2x^ 2/12 \log x \] [Pac. J. Math. 71, 275-294 (1977; Zbl 0359.10038)] and that \(\sum_{n\leq x}(A(n)/P(n))\sim x\), as \(x\to \infty\) [Pac. J. Math. 82, 295-315 (1979; Zbl 0419.10042)]. Thus the largest prime factor P(n) dominates the other prime factors of n. In this paper the authors pursue this idea and extend the above mentioned results in many ways. Let f be a strongly additive function whose values on primes p satisfy \(f(p)=p^{\rho}<(p)\), where \(\rho >0\) and L is a slowly oscillating function. Let \(a_ n\) be a strictly increasing sequence of positive integers. Consider the sums \(U_ f(x)=\sum_{a_ n\leq x}f(a_ n)\) and \(V_ f(x)=\sum_{a_ n\leq x}f(P(a_ n))\). It is shown that if \(\epsilon,c>0\) exist such that for all large x \[ \#\{a_ n\leq x| \quad P(a_ n)>x^{1/2+\epsilon}\}\quad >\quad c.\#\{a_ n\leq x\}, \] then \(U_ f(x)\sim V_ f(x)\) as \(x\to \infty\). The above growth condition on f also gives \(\sum_{n\leq x}(f(n)/f(P(n))\sim x\). Besides these, there are other results in this paper characterising the dominant size of P(n).