Real zeros of holomorphic Hecke cusp forms and sieving short intervals (Q2633997)

Let \(f\) be a holomorphic Hecke cusp form of large even weight \(k\) for the full modular group. It is well known that, such form has \(k/12+O(1)\) zeros in the fundamental domain. A real zero of holomorphic Hecke cusp form is defined as zeros on three geodesic segments on which the cusp form (or a multiple of it) takes real values. In the paper under review, the author improves earlier results of \textit{A. Ghosh} and \textit{P. Sarnak} [J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 14, No. 2, 465--487 (2012; Zbl 1287.11054)], where they showed that existence of many such zeros follows if many short intervals contain numbers whose all prime factors belong to a certain subset of the primes. Then in the paper under review, they prove new results concerning this sieving problem which leads to improved lower bounds for the number of real zeros. Namely, they have unconditional results for the number of zeros on each of the lines \(\mathrm{Re}(z)=0\) and \(\mathrm{Re}(z)=1/2\) and on the union of these lines, i.e., real zeros of holomorphic Hecke cusp forms with an essentially best possible growth if one restricts to almost all Hecke eigenforms of weight \(k\). The proof is based on analytic number theory and additive combinatorics, the latter by an appeal to a variation of Freiman's theorem stating that sets with small doubling are close to arithmetic progressions.