We examine additive properties of dense subsets of sifted sequences, and in particular prove under very general assumptions that such a sequence is an additive asymptotic basis whose order is very well controlled.

Let $Q={\left(Q_k\right)}_{k\ge 0},Q_0=1,Q_{k+1}=q_k{Q}_k,q_k\ge 2$, be a Cantor scale, ${𝐙}_Q$ the compact projective limit group of the groups $𝐙/Q_k𝐙$, identified to ${\prod }_{0\le j\le k-1}𝐙/q_j𝐙$, and let $\mu$ be its normalized Haar measure. To an element $x=\{a_0,a_1,a_2,\cdots \},0\le a_k\le q_{k+1}-1$, of ${𝐙}_Q$ we associate the sequence of integral valued random variables $x_k={\sum }_{0\le j\le k}{a}_j{Q}_j$. The main result of this article is that, given a complex $𝐐$-multiplicative function $g$ of modulus $1$, we have$$\underset{x_k\to x}{lim}(\frac{1}{x_k}\sum _{n\le x_k-1}g\left(n\right)-\prod _{0\le j\le k}\frac{1}{q_j}\sum _{0\le a\le q_j}g\left(a{Q}_j\right))=0\mu \text{-a.e}.$$

Let $\phi$ denote Euler’s totient function. A century-old conjecture of Carmichael asserts that for every $n$, the equation $\phi \left(n\right)=\phi \left(m\right)$ has a solution $m\ne n$. This suggests defining $F\left(n\right)$ as the number of solutions $m$ to the equation $\phi \left(n\right)=\phi \left(m\right)$. (So Carmichael’s conjecture asserts that $F\left(n\right)\ge 2$ always.) Results on $F$ are scattered throughout the literature. For example, Sierpiński conjectured, and Ford proved, that the range of $F$ contains every natural number $k\ge 2$. Also, the maximal order of $F$ has been investigated by Erdős and Pomerance. In...