Petty's Notebook
ArticlesPapersnfieldAbout
Blue and gold loops with marked points beside a golden spiral on a dark background.
alignment

Repetend Rigidity at the Golden Scale

An old golden-ratio crossing, revisited where continuous patterns meet the constraints of finite arithmetic.

September 5, 2026 · 15 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
Blue and gold arcs and rows of points converge at a bright point on a horizontal axis against a dark background.
boundary

The Secondary Term of the Cubic Law

The cubic law gives the leading growth of digit-collision energy. Its secondary term identifies the first systematic correction and the arithmetic that preserves it.

July 1, 2026 · 14 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
boundary

Digit Collisions and the Cubic Law

The collision energy is the cube of the base, split one third to two thirds between diagonal and off-diagonal poles. The cubic constant is unity.

June 4, 2026 · 24 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
boundary

The Orbit's Edge

The orbit is multiplicative. The boundary is additive. The Jacobi sum is the bridge. Two laws from the time of Gauss show up because the boundary forced the character to look at -2.

May 30, 2026 · 25 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
boundary

Carry Boundaries and Bernoulli Spectra

The collision invariant turned out to be a special case. This paper finds the source underneath it. The floor provides the weight. The boundary provides the geometry. The spectrum is their product.

May 29, 2026 · 17 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
essay

The Structure That Survives

The collision invariant is the part of the arithmetic that remains when everything else has been allowed to move. This essay explains the name and the analogy to noble gases.

April 15, 2026 · 9 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
preprint

The Collision Spectrum

The Fourier coefficients factor through Bernoulli numbers and L-function values at s = 1.

March 31, 2026 · 19 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
preprint

The Collision Transform

The collision periodic table, centered and Fourier-transformed. It cancels at s = 1.

March 30, 2026 · 17 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
preprint

The Collision Invariant

A finite signed table for every prime, built from the digit function. The collision invariant.

March 29, 2026 · 21 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
avoidance

The Analytic Collision Transform

The same finite diagonal geometry now carries an exact identity at every s in the critical strip. The analytic factors move. The collision content does not.

January 24, 2026 · 10 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
avoidance

The Collision Spectrum and the L-Function Landscape

The Fourier coefficients factor through Bernoulli numbers and diagonal character sums. The collision weight encodes L-function values at s=1. The digit function meets the critical strip.

March 10, 2025 · 19 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
avoidance

The Spectral Repulsion

Forty percent of the expected overlap between collision weights and prime character sums is missing. The ratio is stable across every prime base from 3 to 37.

January 9, 2025 · 16 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Double Transversality

The collision invariant and the prime distribution avoid each other across the strip. The avoidance persists at every lag, across every base tested.

October 3, 2024 · 13 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The General Neutrality Theorem

Neutrality holds at every odd prime, not just 3. The same reflection identity, the same vanishing, at every scale. The anti-correlation between collision weights and prime sums is universal.

July 21, 2024 · 21 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Neutrality Theorem

The mod-3 component of the collision transform vanishes. Remove it and the sum explodes. Neutrality is not decorative. It is structural.

April 23, 2024 · 24 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Collision Transform and the Critical Strip

The centered sum converges at s=1. Push it below. The penetration depth measures how far into the critical strip the collision signal survives.

January 13, 2024 · 16 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Collision Periodic Table

Forty integers, determined by the last two digits of every prime past 100. Every complement pair sums to exactly -1. At base 12, the table sorts musical intervals by tension.

December 2, 2023 · 20 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Centered Collision Sum

Subtract the family bias and the divergence vanishes. The centered sum converges at s=1, and the rate of convergence is controlled by the classical zero-free region.

October 6, 2023 · 14 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Collision Fluctuation Sum

The collision deviations, summed over primes, drift downward at the Mertens rate. The drift has a sign, a constant, and a structural origin in the digit function.

April 28, 2023 · 20 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

Silent Primes

At seven primes in base 10, the collision count is exactly zero. The recipe that finds them involves the bin partition and a specific floor-function identity.

January 21, 2023 · 35 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
collision

The Character Structure of the Collision Fluctuation

The collision fluctuation decomposes over Dirichlet characters. Only the odd characters survive, forced there by the complement involution. This is where the algebra begins.

October 14, 2022 · 16 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
spectral

Bin Derangements and the Gate Width Theorem

Nine multipliers produce zero collisions at every prime in base 10. The count is exactly b-1, independent of the prime. The proof identifies the deranging set explicitly.

July 4, 2022 · 11 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
spectral

Phase-Filtered Ramanujan Sums and the Spectral Gate

The last digit of a prime controls which spectral modes survive. A phase filter built from Ramanujan sums explains the gate, and the gate width is universal across primes.

April 17, 2022 · 13 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
spectral

The Autocorrelation Formula

The cross-spectral function had resisted a closed form. It turned out to factor through the digit function evaluated at shifted arguments. The formula closes the spectral chain.

January 26, 2022 · 13 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
The Spectral Power of the Digit Function
spectral

The Spectral Power of the Digit Function

Two neighboring remainders share a digit. Sliding the bins and adding arrows gives two exact ways to read that agreement.

October 26, 2021 · 16 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
The Spectral Structure of Fractional Fields
spectral

The Spectral Structure of Fractional Fields

Three pairs of binary fractions cover the same digit slots. Those visible cancellations explain two missing directions in the matrix.

July 13, 2021 · 14 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
The scalars averaged away the geometry. The matrix keeps it.
spectral

The Cross-Alignment Matrix

Compare every fraction to every other. The full grid locates the matches that an average conceals, and its spectrum records their arrangement.

April 11, 2021 · 18 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
A bright central column meets two horizontal bands of light, with orange and violet particles spreading across a dark background.
spectral

The Coherence Decomposition

The reference score and the average over every pair count agreement differently. An exact relation between them explains the split at twelve.

January 12, 2021 · 15 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
Gold points rise across a large lattice among blue and white points, with a smaller gold lattice at the lower right.
preprint

Primes and the Major Scale

The primes that organize long division also organize musical pitch. Deficit ratios approach the Pythagorean comma in base 12 and the just major scale in base 30.

October 31, 2020 · 17 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
The Three-Tier Theorem
alignment

The Three-Tier Theorem

The alignments at 6 and 12 have exact rational values. No denominator fits between them. Pairing complementary fractions explains the gap.

October 16, 2020 · 15 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
The Alignment Limit for All Primes
alignment

The Alignment Limit for All Primes

In decimal, the prime 53 has four repeating cycles and two alignment limits. Counting the digits shared by different remainders explains the split.

July 7, 2020 · 15 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
Digit-Partitioning Primes and the Alignment Formula
alignment

Digit-Partitioning Primes and the Alignment Formula

Single digits, full cycles, complement pairs. Three kinds of repeating decimal share one boundary and one alignment formula.

April 3, 2020 · 15 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
Three and the Golden Ratio
alignment

Three and the Golden Ratio

The alignment count at denominator twelve leads to a cubic with a golden-ratio factor at three.

January 19, 2020 · 11 min
ReadArticleReadPaper
Get notified when new posts are published. No spam, just math.
Alexander S. Petty  |  ©2009-2026