Sums of three squares and Noether–Lefschetz loci

On Sums of Three Squares

(1) r3(n) = 4πn S3(n), where the singular series S3(n) is given by (16) with Q = ∞. While in principle this exact formula can be used to answer almost any question concerning r3(n), the ensuing calculations can be tricky because of the slow convergence of the singular series S3(n). Thus, one often sidesteps (1) and attacks problems involving r3(n) directly. For example, concerning the mean valu...

Sums of distinct squares

Sums-of-Squares Formulas

The following is the extended version of my notes from my ATC talk given on June 4, 2014 at UCLA. I begin with a basic introduction to sums-of-squares formulas, and move on to giving motivation for studying these formulas and discussing some results about them over the reals. More recent techniques have made it possible to obtain similar results over arbitrary fields, and some of these are disc...

Sums of Two Squares

n = 1: 1 = 0 + 1; n = 2 (prime): 2 = 1 + 1; n = 3 (prime) is not a sum of two squares. n = 4: 4 = 2 + 0. n = 5 (prime): 5 = 2 + 1. n = 6 is not a sum of two squares. n = 7 (prime) is not a sum of two squares. n = 8: 8 = 2 + 2. n = 9: 9 = 3 + 0. n = 10: 10 = 3 + 1. n = 11 (prime) is not a sum of two squares. n = 12 is not a sum of two squares. n = 13 (prime): 13 = 3 + 2. n = 14 is not a sum of t...

Sums of squares, sums of cubes, and modern number theory

These are notes which grew out of a talk for general math graduate students with the aim of starting from the questions “Which numbers are sums of two squares?” and “Which numbers are sums of two cubes?” and going on a tour of many central topics in modern number theory. In the notes, I discuss composition laws, class groups, L-functions, modular forms, and elliptic curves, ending with the Birc...