On the value set of the Ramanujan function (Q2580939)

For the classical tau function \(\tau\) defined over a positive integer \(n\) by the coefficient of \(t^n\) in the series expansion of \(t\) times the infinite product of general term \((1-t^k)^{24}\) we consider the following two quantities. For a positive real number \(x,\) and a prime number \(p\) we set \[ V(x) = \{ \tau(n) \mid n \leq x\}, \] and \[ V(x,p) = \{ \tau(n) \pmod{p} \mid n \leq x\}. \] The author proves that \[ \text{card}(V(x)) \geq x^{\frac{1}{3}+o(1)} \] and that \[ \text{card}(V(x,p)) \geq \min \{p^{\frac{1}{2}+o(1)},x^{\frac{1}{4}+o(1)}\}. \] Besides a result concerning the distribution of fractional parts \(\tau(n)/p\) the paper also contains an interesting Waring's type result, namely the author proves the existence of an ``\(s\)'' such that every element of \(\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z\) is a sum of \(s\) terms of the form \(\tau(n_j)\) with the \(n_j\)'s bounded above by \(p^4.\) The proof is indirect. It would be interesting to know more on a minimal such \(s.\)