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The goal of this note is to provide a general lower bound on the number of even values of the Fourier coefficients of an arbitrary eta-quotient F , over any arithmetic progression. Namely, if g a , b (x) denotes the number of even coefficients of F in degrees n ≡ b (mod a) such that n ≤ x , then we show that g a , b (x) / x is unbounded for x large. Note that our result is very close to the best bound currently known even in the special case of the partition function p (n) (namely, x log log x , proven by Bellaïche and Nicolas in 2016). Our argument substantially relies upon, and generalizes, Serre's classical theorem on the number of even values of p (n) , combined with a recent modular-form result by Cotron et al. on the lacunarity modulo 2 of certain eta-quotients. Interestingly, even in the case of p (n) first shown by Serre, no elementary proof is known of this bound. At the end, we propose an elegant problem on quadratic representations, whose solution would finally yield a modular form-free proof of Serre's theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We continue our study of the density of the odd values of eta-quotients, here focusing on the m -regular partition functions b m for m even. Based on extensive computational evidence, we propose an elegant conjecture which, in particular, completely classifies such densities: Let m = 2 j m 0 with m 0 odd. If 2 j < m 0 , then the odd density of b m is 1/2; moreover, such density is equal to 1/2 on every (nonconstant) subprogression A n + B. If 2 j > m 0 , then b m , which is already known to have density zero, is identically even on infinitely many non-nested subprogressions. This and all other conjectures of this paper are consistent with our "master conjecture" on eta-quotients presented in the previous work. In general, our results on b m for m even determine behaviors considerably different from the case of m odd. Also interesting, it frequently happens that on subprogressions A n + B , b m matches the parity of the multipartition functions p t , for certain values of t. We make a suitable use of Ramanujan-Kolberg identities to deduce a large class of such results; as an example, b 28 (49 n + 12) ≡ p 3 (7 n + 2) (mod 2). Additional consequences are several "almost always congruences" for various b m , as well as new parity results specifically for b 11. We wrap up our work with a much simpler proof of the main result of a recent paper by Cherubini-Mercuri, which fully characterized the parity of b 8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the parity of the coefficients of certain eta-quotients, extensively examining the case of m -regular partitions. Our theorems concern the density of their odd values, in particular establishing lacunarity modulo 2 for specified coefficients; self-similarities modulo 2; and infinite families of congruences in arithmetic progressions. For all m ≤ 28 , we either establish new results of these types where none were known, extend previous ones, or conjecture that such results are impossible. All of our work is consistent with a new, overarching conjecture that we present for arbitrary eta-quotients, greatly extending Parkin-Shanks' classical conjecture for the partition function. We pose several other open questions throughout the paper, and conclude by suggesting a list of specific research directions for future investigations in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A famous conjecture of Parkin-Shanks predicts that p (n) is odd with density 1/2. Despite the remarkable amount of work of the last several decades, however, even showing this density is positive seems out of reach. In a 2018 paper with Judge, we introduced a different approach and conjectured the "striking" fact that, if for any A ≡ ± 1 (mod 6) the multipartition function p A (n) has positive odd density, then so does p (n). Similarly, the positive odd density of any p A (n) with A ≡ 3 (mod 6) would imply that of p 3 (n). Our conjecture was shown to be a corollary of an earlier conjecture of the same paper. In this brief note, we provide an unconditional proof of it. An important tool will be Chen's recent breakthrough on a special case of our earlier conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Hirschhorn and the first author considered the parity of the function a (n) which counts the number of integer partitions of n wherein each part appears with odd multiplicity. They derived an effective characterization of the parity of a (2 m) based solely on properties of m. In this paper, we quickly reprove their result, and then extend it to an explicit characterization of the parity of a (n) for all n ≢ 7 (mod 8). We also exhibit some infinite families of congruences modulo 2 which follow from these characterizations. We conclude by discussing the case n ≡ 7 (mod 8) , where, interestingly, the behavior of a (n) modulo 2 appears to be entirely different. In particular, we conjecture that, asymptotically, a (8 m + 7) is odd precisely 5 0 % of the time. This conjecture, whose broad generalization to the context of eta-quotients will be the topic of a subsequent paper, remains wide open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We continue our study of a basic but seemingly intractable problem in integer partition theory, namely the conjecture that p ( n ) is odd exactly 50% of the time. Here, we greatly extend on our previous paper by providing a doubly-indexed, infinite framework of conjectural identities modulo 2, and show how to, in principle, prove each such identity. However, our conjecture remains open in full generality. A striking consequence is that, under suitable existence conditions, if any t -multipartition function is odd with positive density and t ≢ 0 ( mod 3 ) , then p ( n ) is also odd with positive density. These are all facts that appear virtually impossible to show unconditionally today. Our arguments employ a combination of algebraic and analytic methods, including certain technical tools recently developed by Radu in his study of the parity of the Fourier coefficients of modular forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent nice result due to I. Pak and G. Panova is the strict unimodality of the q-binomial coefficients ... . Since their proof used representation theory and Kronecker coefficients, the authors also asked for an argument that would employ Zeilberger's KOH theorem. In this note, we give such a proof. Then, as a further application of our method, we also provide a short proof of their conjecture that the difference between consecutive coefficients of ... can get arbitrarily large, when we assume that b is fixed and a is large enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using entirely algebraic or elementary methods, partly inspired by recent ideas of P. Monsky on quadratic representations, we determine a new asymptotic lower bound for the number of odd values of a fundamental modular function in number theory, the Klein j -function. Namely, the number of n ≤ x such that the Klein j -function — or equivalently, the cubic partition function — is odd has order at least x log ⁡ log ⁡ x log ⁡ x , for x → ∞ . This improves recent results of Berndt, Yee and Zaharescu and Chen and Lin, approaching significantly the best bound currently known for p ( n ) , obtained using modular forms. Then, in the final section, we show how to employ modular forms to slightly refine our bound. In fact, our brief argument, combining a recent result of Nicolas–Serre with a classical theorem of Serre on level 1 modular forms, more generally provides a lower bound for the odd values of any positive power of the generating function of p ( n ) . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A beautiful recent conjecture of Armstrong predicts the average size of a partition that is simultaneously an s-core and a t-core, where s and t are coprime. Our goal is to prove this conjecture when t = s + 1. These simultaneous (s, s + 1)-core partitions, which are enumerated by Catalan numbers, have average size (s+1 3 )/2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this note is to introduce a new approach to the study of one of the most basic and seemingly intractable problems in partition theory, namely, the conjecture that the partition function p(n) is equidistributed modulo 2.Our main result will relate the densities, say, δt, of the odd values of the t-multipartition functions pt(n), for several integers t. In particular, we will show that if δt>0 for some t∈{5,7,11,13,17,19,23,25}, then (assuming it exists) δ1>0; that is, p(n) itself is odd with positive density. Notice that, currently, the best unconditional result does not even imply that p(n) is odd for x values of n≤x. In general, we conjecture that δt=1/2 for all t odd, i.e., that similarly to the case of p(n), all multipartition functions are in fact equidistributed modulo 2.Our arguments will employ a number of algebraic and analytic methods, ranging from an investigation modulo 2 of some classical Ramanujan identities and several other eta product results, to a unified approach that studies the parity of the Fourier coefficients of a broad class of modular form identities recently introduced by Radu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]