On Artin's conjecture.
We use Bourgain's recent bound for short exponential sums to prove certain independence results related to the distribution of squarefree numbers in arithmetic progressions.
The paper deals with asymptotics for a class of arithmetic functions which describe the value distribution of the greatest-common-divisor function. Typically, they are generated by a Dirichlet series whose analytic behavior is determined by the factor ζ2(s)ζ(2s − 1). Furthermore, multivariate generalizations are considered.
We prove that there are no strings of three consecutive integers each divisible by the number of its divisors, and we give an estimate for the number of positive integers n ≤ x such that each of n and n + 1 is a multiple of the number of its divisors.