Sums of cubes with shifts

Abstract

Let $μ_1, \ldots, μ_s$ be real numbers, with $μ_1$ irrational. We investigate sums of shifted cubes $F(x_1,\ldots,x_s) = (x_1 - μ_1)^3 + \ldots + (x_s - μ_s)^3$. We show that if $η$ is real, $τ>0$ is sufficiently large, and $s \ge 9$, then there exist integers $x_1 > μ_1, \ldots, x_s > μ_s$ such that $|F(\mathbf{x})- τ| < η$. 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.