Sums of two squares and the tau-function: Ramanujan's trail

Abstract

Ramanujan, in his famous first letter to Hardy, claimed a very precise estimate for the number of integers that can be written as a sum of two squares. Far less well-known is that he also made further claims of a similar nature for the non-divisibility of the Ramanujan tau-function for certain primes. In this survey, we provide more historical details and also discuss related later developments. These show that, as so often, Ramanujan was an explorer in a fascinating wilderness, leaving behind him a beckoning trail.

arXiv commentsurvey article, 38 pages, 3 tables, 208 references. We took around 30 suggestions of the two referees into account. To appear in Expositiones Mathematicae