Abstract:
We study the following general problem. Given natural number $c$ and a pair of multiplicative functions $f,g$. The question is to find the number of solutions of the equation
$$
f(n)\,-\,g(n)\,=\,c.
$$
Under some conditions to the solutions of this equation and to the functions $f,g$ (in particular, $f(n) > g(n)$ for $n > 1$), we prove that the number of such solutions does not exceed $c^{\,1 - \varepsilon}$. Next, for the number
$J(c)$ of solutions of the equation
$$
n - \varphi(n) = c,
$$
we find the followingformula:
$$
J(c)\,=\,G(c + 1) + O(c^{\,3/4 + o(1)}).
$$
Here $G(k)$ denotes the number of representations of $k$ by the sum of two primes.
In order to obtain such results, we use so-called multiplicative graphs.