The mean values of multiplicative functions. II (Q1382869)

Sums of the type \( \sum _{n\leq x} g_1 (n+1) g_2 (n) \) with multiplicative functions \(g_1, g_2\) were recently studied by several authors, mainly in connection with the distribution of additive functions on consecutive integers, and hence under the assumption that \( | g_j(n) | \leq 1\). Here this condition is relieved to \( | g_j(n) | \ll ( \log n)^c \), while it is still required that \(g_j(p)\) is near to 1 on average. The results depend on many parameters and are too complicated to be quoted; a typical application is to a function like \(g(n) = (\sigma (n)/n) ^\alpha a(n)^\beta \), where \(a(n)\) is the number of abelian groups of order \(n\) and \(\beta \leq 0\).