We call a finite set ${\mathcal{D}}\subset {\Bbb Z}^s$ a {\it (self-affine) tile digit set} with respect to an expanding integral matrix ${\bf A}$ if the self-affine set $T({\bf A}, \D)$ is a tile in ${\Bbb R}^s$. It has been a widely open problem to characterize the tile digit sets for a given ${\bf A}$. While there are substantial investigations on ${\Bbb R}$, there is no result on ${\Bbb R}^s$ other than the case where $|\det {\bf A}| =p$ with $p$ a prime. In this paper, we make an initiation to study a basic case ${\bf A} = p{\bf I}_2$ in ${\Bbb R}^2$. We characterize the tile digit sets by making use of the zeros of the mask polynomial of ${\mathcal{D}}$ associated with a tile criterion of Kenyon [K], together with a recent result of Iosevich {\it et al} on factorization of sets in ${\Bbb Z}_p \times {\Bbb Z}_p$ [IMP].

In two earlier papers with the same title, we studied connections between Voronoi’s formula in the divisor problem and Atkinson’s formula for the mean square of Riemann’s zeta-function. Now we consider this correspondence in terms of segments of sums appearing in these formulae and show that a certain arithmetic conjecture concerning the divisor function implies best possible bounds for the classical error terms Δ($x$) and$E$($T$).

Let$Z$($t$) be the classical Hardy function in the theory of Riemann’s zeta-function. An asymptotic formula with an error term$O$($T$^{1/6}log$T$) is given for the integral of$Z$($t$) over the interval [0,$T$], with special attention paid to the critical cases when the fractional part of $\sqrt{T/2\pi }$ is close to $\frac{1}{4}$ or $\frac{3}{4}$ .

This paper gives a new and direct construction of the multi-prime big de Rham–Witt complex, which is defined for every commutative and unital ring; the original construction by Madsen and myself relied on the adjoint functor theorem and accordingly was very indirect. The construction given here also corrects the 2-torsion which was not quite correct in the original version. The new construction is based on the theory of modules and derivations over a$λ$-ring which is developed first. The main result in this first part of the paper is that the universal derivation of a$λ$-ring is given by the universal derivation of the underlying ring together with an additional structure depending directly on the$λ$-ring structure in question. In the case of the ring of big Witt vectors, this additional structure gives rise to divided Frobenius operators on the module of Kähler differentials. It is the existence of these divided Frobenius operators that makes the new construction of the big de Rham–Witt complex possible. It is further shown that the big de Rham–Witt complex behaves well with respect to étale maps, and finally, the big de Rham–Witt complex of the ring of integers is explicitly evaluated.

We enhance the efficient congruencing method for estimating Vinogradov’s integral for moments of order 2$s$, with $${1\leqslant s\leqslant k^{2}-1}$$ . In this way, we prove the main conjecture for such even moments when $${1\leqslant s\leqslant \tfrac{1}{4}(k+1)^{2}}$$ , showing that the moments exhibit strongly diagonal behaviour in this range. There are improvements also for larger values of$s$, these finding application to the asymptotic formula in Waring’s problem.