EQUIDISTRIBUTION OF DIVISORS IN RESIDUE CLASSES AND REPRESENTATIONS BY BINARY QUADRATIC FORMS

Abstract

We study the number of divisors in residue classes modulo m and prove, for example, that the exact equidistribution holds for almost all natural numbers coprime to m in the sense of natural density if and only if m = 2kp1p2…ps, where k and s are non-negative integers and pj are distinct Fermat primes. We also provide a general and exact lower bound for the proportion of divisors in the residue class 1 mod m. The same combinatorial technique using Davenport's constant leads to exact lower bounds for the number of representations of a natural number by a given binary quadratic form with a negative discriminant.