Landau and Ramanujan approximations for divisor sums and coefficients of cusp forms (Q2102147)

A set \(S\) of positive integers is said to be multiplicative if for every pair \((m, n)\) of coprime positive integers we have \(mn\in S\) if and only if \(m, n \in S\). Let \(S\) be multiplicative, and \(S(x)\) be the number of positive integers \(n\leq x\) that are in \(S\). A classical case, studied by Landau and Ramanujan, independently, is the set of natural numbers that can be written as a sum of two squares. Motivated by their approximations of the related \(S(x)\), we call \(C_Sx/\log^\delta x\) and \(C_S\int_2^x (1/\log^\delta t)dt\) the Landau and the Ramanujan approximation to \(S(x)\), respectively, where \(C_S\) is a positive constant. The ``Landau vs. Ramanujan problem'' is comparing sharpness of the above approximations. In the paper under review, the authors consider the fruitful case \(S=\{n\geq 1: q\nmid \sigma_k(n)\}\), where \(\sigma_k\) is the usual \(k\)-th divisor sum function. They provide a remarkable historical review of the Landau vs. Ramanujan problem for this case, and provide their results including second order approximations of the related counting function \(S(x)\). They give applications to the non-divisibility of the Fourier coefficients of six standard cusp forms by so-called exceptional primes. The cusp forms that make the object of their study are the normalized generators of the six one-dimensional cusp form spaces for the full modular group \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})\).