We study the asymptotic equidistribution of points with discrete energy close to Robin’s constant of a compact set in the plane. Our main tools are the energy estimates from potential theory. We also consider the quantitative aspects of this equidistribution. Applications include estimates of growth for the Fekete and Leja polynomials associated with large classes of compact sets, convergence rates of the discrete energy approximations to Robin’s constant, and problems on the means of zeros of polynomials with integer coefficients.

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 $\frac{3}{4}$ .

We consider the Cauchy problem for a second order weakly hyperbolic equation, with coefficients depending only on the time variable. We prove that if the coefficients of the equation belong to the Gevrey class $\gamma^{s_{0}}$ and the Cauchy data belong to $\gamma^{s_{1}}$ , then the Cauchy problem has a solution in $\gamma^{s_{0}}([0,T^{*}];\gamma^{s_{1}}(\mathbb{R}))$ for some$T$^{*}>0, provided 1≤$s$_{1}≤2−1/$s$_{0}. If the equation is strictly hyperbolic, we may replace the previous condition by 1≤$s$_{1}≤$s$_{0}.

In a uniform random recursive$k$-directed acyclic graph, there is a root, 0, and each node in turn, from 1 to$n$, chooses$k$uniform random parents from among the nodes of smaller index. If$S$_{$n$}is the shortest path distance from node$n$to the root, then we determine the constant$σ$such that$S$_{$n$}/log$n$→$σ$in probability as$n$→∞. We also show that max_{1≤$i$≤$n$}$S$_{$i$}/log$n$→$σ$in probability.

General upper tail estimates are given for counting edges in a random induced subhypergraph of a fixed hypergraph ℋ, with an easy proof by estimating the moments. As an application we consider the numbers of arithmetic progressions and Schur triples in random subsets of integers. In the second part of the paper we return to the subgraph counts in random graphs and provide upper tail estimates in the rooted case.