1.

Sums of squares
Its a classical problem in number theory to ask which integers N can be represented by a sum of squares. After a little bit of playing with sums of two squares,
one might be led to conjecture the following theorem.
Theorem 1.1 (Fermat). A number Q
N can be represented as a sum of two squares
precisely when N is of the form n2 pi where each pi is a prime congruent to 1
mod 4.
By looking at squares mod 4, we see that a number is congruent to 3 mod 4 cannot
be written as a sum of two squares. This leads us to wonder how many squares do
you need to represent every number? By similar congruence considerations(mod 8
now), we discover that you cannot represent any number cogruent to 7 mod 8 as a
sum of 3 squares. What about 4 squares?
Theorem 1.2 (Lagrange). Every natural number is the sum of at most 4 squares
Later, the 3 squares question was solved:
Theorem 1.3 (Legendre-Gauss). A number N can be represented as a sum of 3
squares precisely when N is not of the form 4m (8n 1)
From this we see that the critical number of squares here is 4. Only at this
point can we represent every natural number as the sum of 4 squares. This also
means that any number can be represented by at most d squares, for any d 4.
In particular any number can be represented as the sum of at most 5 squares, at
most 6 squares and so on. To see this difference, lets consider the solutions to
5 = n21 + n22 + n23 + n24 and 5 = n21 + n22 + n23 + n24 + n25 . To the first question, we
have the solutions (0,0,1,2) and all its permutations and sign changes. Note that
Im representing a solution as an integer vector in 4 variables. While for the second
question, we have (0,0,1,2,0) with all of its permutations and sign changes AND the
new solutions (1,1,1,1,1) with all of its sign changes and trivial permutations. In
particular, we can embed the solutions of 4 squares into the solutions of 5 squares
in many natural ways. Because of this we expect the number of possible ways to
represent a number as d squares to grow with d, or at least not to decrease.
Naturally, this leads to asking how many ways can a number be represented as a
sum of squares. By the above embedding, this question doesnt make sense unless
we fix the number of squares. And for 4 squares, we have a nice theorem of Jacobi:
Theorem 1.4. Write the number of ways to write a number N N as r(N ) =
{n Z4 : n21 + n22 + n23 + n24 = N }. Then
X
r(N ) = 8
f
f |N,46|f

For the purposes of this discussion, Im not interested in proving Jacobis theorem. However, Id like to note that the proof involves showing that the generating
series of r(N ) is a modular form of level 4 which allows you to write it as a linear
combination of an Eisenstein seris and a cusp form. Computing the first couple of
coefficients allows one to do this quickly, then the explicit nature of the Eisenstein
series yields the formula. For an exposition see Steins Complex Analysis. If Im
not going to prove this nice theorem, then what is the purpose of this discussion?
Hopefully by now, Ive motivated the the question, how many ways can a natural
1

number be written as the sum of d squares for d 4. In subsequent posts, I will

introduce the HardyLittlewood circle method to study asymptotics for fixed d 5
and the Kloosterman refinement to reduce to 4 squares. From there well look at
related equidistribution and ergodic theorems. Ill prove
Pd
Theorem 1.5 (HardyLittlewood). Let rd (N ) = {x = (x1 , . . . , xd ) Zd : i=1 x2i =
N }. For d 5,
rd (N ) = S(N )N d/21 + o(N d/21 )
where S(N ) is a constant depending on N lying in an interval [a, b] (0, )
Then extend this to
P4
Theorem 1.6 (HardyLittlewood). Let r4 (N ) = {x = (x1 , . . . , x4 ) Z4 : i=1 x2i =
N }.
rd (N ) = S(N )N + o(N )
where S(N ) is a constant depending on N . (Note that d = 4 so d/2 1 = 1.)

Theorem 1.7. For a point x = (x1 , . . . , xd ) Rd on a sphere of radius N

Pd
2
e.g.
i=1 xi = N , we can project this point onto the unit sphere by rescaling,

d 5, for every natural number N , we have SN , the

x 7 x/ N . In dimensions

sphere of radius N . Consider the lattice points on SN projected onto the unit
sphere. This sequence of points become equidistributed on the unit sphere.
2. Warings problem
Now that weve discussed sums of squares for a bit, you might be wondering
what happens if you changed squares to cubes or fourth power, etc. In 1770, the
same year as Lagranges 4 square theorem, Waring asserted that that for any degree
k 2, there is some dimension g(k) such that every number is the sum of g(k) k th
powers. Hilbert was the first to prove this, but his bounds were very weak and
gave no idea what the minimum dimension possible is. HardyLittlewood looked
at Warings problem and using their circle method were able to give reasonable
bounds for the minimal dimension, g(k). A feature of Warings problem is small
numbers need a lot of summands. For instance, 2k 1 must be written as the
sum of 2k 1 1s. And like for squares there can be congruence obstructions that
force g(k) to be at least a certain size. This led HardyLittlewood to studying a
variant of Warings problem where one only needs all sufficiently large numbers to
be represented as a sum of k th powers; the minimal dimension here is denoted G(k).
For this problem, they gave an excellent result:
Theorem 2.1 (HardyLittlewood). For k 2, let rk,d (N ) = {x = (x1 , . . . , xd )
Pd
Zd : i=1 xki = N }. If d k2k1 , then
rd (N ) = S(N )N d/k1 + o(N d/k1 )
where S(N ) is a constant depending on N lying in an interval [a, b] (0, )
Hua made a substantial improvement by reducing g(k) to 2k while Vinogradov
made the most impressive improvement showing that g(k) is O(k 3 ) as k tends to
infinity.
Remarks 1. By dimension, I mean the number of summands. 2. The notation
g(k) and G(k) were introduced by Hardy-Littlewood.

Ill prove Hardy-Littlewoods result which will be easy after the sums of squares
case and then Ill make use of Huas inequality to get Huas result. Unfortunately,
I wont have time to cover Vinogradovs results especially since I dont understand
them.
Im not sure how this will turn out and so my goals may change; I will try to
reflect any changes on this page.
Left to do: 1. Add references and links 2. Correct typos 3. Do I want a list of
lectures on this page?