Almost everywhere convergence questions of series of translates of non-negative functions

Abstract: This survey paper is based on a talk given at the 44th Summer Symposium in Real Analysis in Paris. This line of research was initiated by a question of Haight and Weizs\"aker concerning almost everywhere convergence properties of series of the form $\sum_{n=1}^{{\infty}}f(nx)$. A more general, additive version of this problem is the following: Suppose $\Lambda$ is a discrete infinite set of nonnegative real numbers. We say that $ {\Lambda}$ is of type 1 if the series $s(x)=\sum_{\lambda\in\Lambda}f(x+\lambda)$ satisfies a zero-one law. This means that for any non-negative measurable $f: {{\mathbb R}}\to [0,+ {\infty})$ either the convergence set $C(f, {\Lambda})={x: s(x)<+ {\infty} }= {{\mathbb R}}$ modulo sets of Lebesgue zero, or its complement the divergence set $D(f, {\Lambda})={x: s(x)=+ {\infty} }= {{\mathbb R}}$ modulo sets of measure zero. If $ {\Lambda}$ is not of type 1 we say that $ {\Lambda}$ is of type 2. The exact characterization of type $1$ and type $2$ sets is still not known. The part of the paper discussing results concerning this question is based on several joint papers written at the beginning with J-P. Kahane and D. Mauldin, later with B. Hanson, B. Maga and G. V\'ertesy. Apart from results from the above project we also cover historic background, other related results and open questions.