On the first case of Fermat's last theorem.
The function is known to change sign infinitely often, but so far all calculated values are positive. In this paper we prove that the first sign change occurs well before exp(495.702833165).
This paper and its sequels deal with a new concept of distributions modulo one which is connected with the Dirichlet divisor and similar problems. Each of the theorems has some independent interest, and in addition some of the techniques developed lead to improvements in certain applications of the hyperbola method.
As promised in the first paper of this series (Ann. Inst. Fourier, 26-4 (1976), 115-131), these two articles deal with the asymptotic distribution of the fractional parts of where is an arithmetical function (namely , , ) and is an integer (or a prime order) running over the interval . The results obtained are rather sharp, although one can improve on some of them at the cost of increased technicality. Number-theoretic applications will be given later on.
We present an algorithm for computing the greatest integer that is not a solution of the modular Diophantine inequality , with complexity similar to the complexity of the Euclid algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor of two integers.