Large sieve inequalities with power moduli and Waring's problem

Abstract

We improve the large sieve inequality with $k$th-power moduli, for all $k\ge 4$. Our method relates these inequalities to a restricted variant of Waring's problem. Firstly, we input a classical divisor bound on the number of representations of a positive integer as a sum of two $k$th-powers. Secondly, we input a recent and general result of Wooley on mean values of exponential sums. Lastly, we state a conditional result, based on the conjectural Hardy-Littlewood formula for the number of representations of a large positive integer as a sum of $k+1$ $k$th-powers.