Convergence of series of dilated functions and spectral norms of GCD matrices

We establish a connection between the $L^2$ norm of sums of dilated functions whose $j$th Fourier coefficients are $\mathcal{O}(j^{-\alpha})$ for some $\alpha \in (1/2,1)$, and the spectral norms of certain greatest common divisor (GCD) matrices. Utilizing recent bounds for these spectral norms, we obtain sharp conditions for the convergence in $L^2$ and for the almost everywhere convergence of series of dilated functions.