Sums of cubes with shifts

Abstract

Let $\mu_1, \ldots, \mu_s$ be real numbers, with $\mu_1$ irrational. We investigate sums of shifted cubes $F(x_1,\ldots,x_s) = (x_1 - \mu_1)^3 + \ldots + (x_s - \mu_s)^3$. We show that if $\eta$ is real, $\tau >0$ is sufficiently large, and $s \ge 9$, then there exist integers $x_1 > \mu_1, \ldots, x_s > \mu_s$ such that $|F(\mathbf{x})- \tau| < \eta$. This is a real analogue to Waring's problem. We then prove a full density result of the same flavour for $s \ge 5$. For $s \ge 11$, we provide an asymptotic formula. If $s \ge 6$ then $F(\mathbf{Z}^s)$ is dense on the reals. Given nine variables, we can generalise this to sums of univariate cubic polynomials.