On van der Corput property of shifted primes

Abstract

We prove that the upper bound for the van der Corput property of the set of shifted primes is $O((\log n)^{-1+o(1)})$, giving an answer to a problem considered by Ruzsa and Montgomery for the set of shifted primes $p-1$. We construct normed non-negative valued cosine polynomials with the spectrum in the set $p-1$, $p\leq n$, and a small free coefficient $a_{0}=O((\log n)^{-1+o(1)})$. This implies the same bound for the intersective property of the set $p-1$, and also bounds for several properties related to uniform distribution of related sets.