Counting zeros of cosine polynomials: on a problem of Littlewood (Q1711919)

The problem studied in this paper has its origins in an old question of Littlewood on cosine polynomials with \(0, 1\) coefficients. Given a finite set \(A \subset \mathbb{N}\bigcup \{0\}\) and denoting \(f_{A}(\theta)=\sum_{\alpha \in A}\cos(\alpha \theta)\), \(\theta\in [0, 2\pi]\), Littlewood asked for the lower bound on the number of zeros of the function \(f_{A}(\theta)\) in terms of \(N\). The main results are the following. Theorem 1. For a finite set \(A \subset \mathbb{N}\bigcup \{0\}\) the cosine polynomial \(f_{A}(\theta)=\sum_{\alpha \in A}\cos(\alpha \theta)\), has at least \((\log \log \log |A|)^{1/2 + o(1)}\) distinct roots in \([0, 2\pi]\). Theorem 2. For \(n\in \mathbb{N}\), and finite \(R \subset \mathbb{Z}\), there exist constants \(C, C_{R} > 0\) so that the following holds. If \(f(\theta)=\sum_{r=0}^{n}C_{r}\cos(r \theta)\) is cosine polynomial with \(C_{r}\in R\) for all \(r\in [0, n]\) and \(|f(0)|\geq C(\log(M(R)))^{2}\), then \(f\) has at least \(C_{R}\cdot \left (\frac{\log_{(3)}|f(0)|}{\log_{(5)}|f(0)|}\right )^{1/2}\) zeros in \([0, 2\pi]\). Here the notation \(\log_{(r)}\) means the \(r\)th-iterated logarithm.