On Farey fractions with small prime factors (Q2571502)

Problems regarding the distribution of smooth numbers (numbers without large prime factors) have attracted a lot of attention. A classical result on smooth numbers is the following: For a positive integer \(n\), denote by \(p^+(n)\) its largest prime factor. Let \[ \Psi(x,y)=\sharp\{n\leq x\;:\;p^+(n)\leq y\} \] be the counting function of positive integers without large prime factors. Then, for any fixed \(u\geq 1\) and \(x=y^u\), we have \[ \Psi(x,y)\sim \rho(u)x\quad \text{as } x\rightarrow\infty \] (the factor \(x\) is missing on the right-hand side of (1) in the paper under review), where \(\rho(u)\) is the Dickman function which is defined by a certain differential equation. Many works investigate the validity of the asymptotic \[ \Psi(x,y)\sim \rho\left(\frac{\log x}{\log y}\right)x \] as \(x,y\rightarrow\infty\), where \(y\) is allowed to grow weaker than any fixed power of \(x\) (see \textit{A. Hildebrand}'s result in [''On the number of positive integers \(\leq x\) and free of prime factors \(>y\),'' J. Number Theory 22, 289-307 (1986; Zbl 0575.10038)], for example). The author establishes a similar relation for the counting function \[ S(x,y)=\sharp\left\{\frac{m}{n} \;:\;1\leq m<n\leq x,\;(m,n)=1,\;p^+(mn)\leq y\right\} \] of Farey fractions having no large prime factors. He proves that the asymptotic formula \[ S(x,y)\sim \frac{3}{\pi^2}\cdot \rho^2\left(\frac{\log x}{\log y}\right)x^2 \] holds, with a certain small error term, in the range \[ x\geq 2,\quad \exp\left\{(\log\log x)^{5/3+\varepsilon}\right\}\leq y\leq x. \] The proof begins with a reduction to the counting function \[ \Psi_r(x,y)=\sharp\{n\leq x\;:\;(n,r)=1,\;p^+(n)\leq y\} \] and uses some new asymptotic estimates for this function and certain averages related to \(\Psi(x,y)\).