Multiplicative functions in short intervals

Abstract: We introduce a general result relating "short averages" of a multiplicative function to "long averages" which are well understood. This result has several consequences. First, for the M"obius function we show that there are cancellations in the sum of

m u (n)

in almost all intervals of the form

[x, x + p s i (x)]

with

p s i (x) i g h t a r r o w i n f t y

arbitrarily slowly. This goes beyond what was previously known conditionally on the Density Hypothesis or the stronger Riemann Hypothesis. Second, we settle the long-standing conjecture on the existence of

x^{e p s i l o n}

-smooth numbers in intervals of the form

[x, x + c (v a r e p s i l o n) s q r t x]

, recovering unconditionally a conditional (on the Riemann Hypothesis) result of Soundararajan. Third, we show that the mean-value of

l a m b d a (n) l a m b d a (n + 1)

, with

l a m b d a (n)

Liouville's function, is non-trivially bounded in absolute value by

1 - d e l t a

for some

d e l t a > 0

. This settles an old folklore conjecture and constitutes progress towards Chowla's conjecture. Fourth, we show that a (general) real-valued multiplicative function

f

has a positive proportion of sign changes if and only if

f

is negative on at least one integer and non-zero on a positive proportion of the integers. This improves on many previous works, and is new already in the case of the M"obius function. We also obtain some additional results on smooth numbers in almost all intervals, and sign changes of multiplicative functions in all intervals of square-root length.

Review text

In the paper under review, the authors relate short averages of the multiplicative function \(f:\mathbb{N}\to[-1,1]\) to its long averages, by proving that there exists absolute constants \(C,C'>1\) such that for any \(2\leq h\leq X\) and \(\delta>0\), one has NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\left|\frac{1}{h}\sum_{x\leq n\leq x+h}f(n)-\frac{1}{X}\sum_{X\leq n\leq 2X}f(n) \right|\leq\delta+C'\frac{\log\log h}{\log h}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE for all but at most NEWLINE\[NEWLINE CX\left(\frac{\log^{\frac{1}{3}}h}{\delta^2 h^{\frac{\delta}{25}}}+\frac{1}{\delta^2\log^{\frac{1}{50}}X}\right)NEWLINE\]NEWLINE integers \(x\in[X,2X]\). Moreover, as a bilinear version of this result holding in all intervals of length \(\asymp\sqrt{x}\), they show that for any \(10\leq h\leq x\) one has NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\begin{aligned} & \frac{1}{h\sqrt{x}\log 2}\sum_{\overset {x\leq n_1n_2\leq x+h\sqrt{x}}{\sqrt{x}\leq n_1\leq 2\sqrt{x}}}f(n_1)f(n_2)\\ &=\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{x}}\sum_{\sqrt{x}\leq n\leq 2\sqrt{x}}f(n)\right)^2+O\left(\frac{\log\log h}{\log h}+\frac{1}{\log^{\frac{1}{100}}x}\right).\end{aligned}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE The authors use the above results to study \(x^\varepsilon\)-smooth numbers by proving that for given \(\varepsilon>0\) there exists constant \(C(\varepsilon)>0\) such that the number of \(x^\varepsilon\)-smooth numbers in the interval \([x,x+C(\varepsilon)\sqrt{x}]\) is at least \(\sqrt{x}\log^{-4}x\) for all large enough \(x\). As another application, they consider Chowla's conjecture on the Liouville's function \(\lambda(n)=(-1)^{\Omega(n)}\) asserting that \(x^{-1}\sum_{n\leq x}\lambda(n)\lambda(n+1)=o(1)\) as \(x\to\infty\), and prove that for every integer \(h\geq 1\) there exists \(\delta(h)>0\) such that NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\frac{1}{x}\left|\sum_{n\leq x}\lambda(n)\lambda(n+h)\right|\leq 1-\delta(h)NEWLINE\]NEWLINE for all large enough \(x>1\). The authors mention that same result holds for any completely multiplicative function \(f:\mathbb N\to[-1,1]\) with \(f(n)<0\) for some \(n>0\), and they consider the problem of counting sign changes of \(f(n)\).

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