We show that the sequence of integers which have nearly the typical number of distinct prime factors forms a Poisson process. More precisely, for $\de$ arbitrarily small and positive, the nearest neighbor spacings between integers $n$ with $|\om(n)-\log_2 n|\le (\log_2 n)^{\de}$ obey the Poisson distribution law.
We prove that there are infinitely often pairs of primes much closer than the average spacing between primes - almost within the square root of the average spacing. We actually prove a more general result concerning the set of values taken on by the differences between primes.
We study the distribution of spacings between squares modulo q as the number of prime divisors of q tends to infinity. In an earlier paper Kurlberg and Rudnick proved that the spacing distribution for square free q is Poissonian, this paper extends the result to arbitrary q.
We give heuristic arguments and computer results to support the hypothesis that, after appropriate rescaling, the statistics of spacings between adjacent prime numbers follows the Poisson distribution. The scaling transformation removes the oscillations in the NNSD of primes. These oscillations have the very profound period of length six. We also calculate the spectral rigidity $Δ_3$ for prime numbers by two methods. After suitable averaging one of these methods gives the Poisson dependence $Δ_3(L)=L/15$.
We prove that a positive proportion of the gaps between consecutive primes are short gaps of length less than any fixed fraction of the average spacing between primes.
We use short divisor sums to approximate prime tuples and moments for primes in short intervals. By connecting these results to classical moment problems we are able to prove that a positive proportion of consecutive primes are within a quarter of the average spacing between primes.
We show by an inclusion-exclusion argument that the prime $k$-tuple conjecture of Hardy and Littlewood provides an asymptotic formula for the number of consecutive prime numbers which are a specified distance apart. This refines one aspect of a theorem of Gallagher that the prime $k$-tuple conjecture implies that the prime numbers are distributed in a Poisson distribution around their average spacing.
Let a,f and g be integers, with a and f coprime. Under the generalized Riemann hypothesis it follows from work of Hooley and Lenstra that the set of primes p such that p=a(mod f) and g is primitive root mod p has a natural density. In this note we explicitly evaluate this density and give some applications of this result.
The first purpose of our paper is to show how Hooley's celebrated method leading to his conditional proof of the Artin conjecture on primitive roots can be combined with the Hardy-Littlewood circle method. We do so by studying the number of representations of an odd integer as a sum of three primes, all of which have prescribed primitive roots. The second purpose is to analyse the singular series. In particular, using results of Lenstra, Stevenhagen and Moree, we provide a partial factorisation as an Euler product and prove that this does not extend to a complete factorisation.
Let a and f be coprime positive integers. Let g be an integer. Under the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis (GRH) it follows by a result of H.W. Lenstra that the set of primes p such that p=a(mod f) and g is a primitive root modulo p has a natural density. In this note this density is explicitly evaluated with an Euler product as result.
In this paper we study some structure properties of primitive weird numbers in terms of their factorization. We give sufficient conditions to ensure that a positive integer is weird. Two algorithms for generating weird numbers having a given number of distinct prime factors are presented. These algorithms yield primitive weird numbers of the form $mp_1\dots p_k$ for a suitable deficient positive integer $m$ and primes $p_1,\dots,p_k$ and generalize a recent technique developed for generating primitive weird numbers of the form $2^np_1p_2$. The same techniques can be used to search for odd weir…
Given an integer n>1, it is a classical Diophantine problem that whether n can be written as a sum of two rational cubes. The study of this problem, considering several special cases of n, has a copious history that can be traced back to the works of Sylvester, Satgé, Selmer etc. and up to the recent works of Alpöge-Bhargava-Shnidman. In this article, we consider the cube sum problem for cube-free integers n which has two distinct prime factors none of which is 3.
We introduce a method for showing that there exist prime numbers which are very close together. The method depends on the level of distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions. Assuming the Elliott-Halberstam conjecture, we prove that there are infinitely often primes differing by 16 or less. Even a much weaker conjecture implies that there are infinitely often primes a bounded distance apart. Unconditionally, we prove that there exist consecutive primes which are closer than any arbitrarily small multiple of the average spacing, that is, \[ \liminf_{n\to \infty} \frac{p_{n+1}-p_n}{\log p…
In this article we consider the completely multiplicative sequences $(a_n)_{n \in \mathbf{N}}$ defined on a field $\mathbf{K}$ and satisfying $$\sum_{p| p \leq n, a_p \neq 1, p \in \mathbf{P}}\frac{1}{p}<\infty,$$ where $\mathbf{P}$ is the set of prime numbers. We prove that if such sequences are automatic then they cannot have infinitely many prime numbers $p$ such that $a_{p}\neq 1$. Using this fact, we prove that if a completely multiplicative sequence $(a_n)_{n \in \mathbf{N}}$, vanishing or not, can be written in the form $a_n=b_nχ_n$ such that $(b_n)_{n \in \mathbf{N}}$ is a non ultimate…
In a recent joint work with D.A. Goldston and C.Y. Yildirim we just missed by a hairbreadth a proof that bounded gaps between primes occur infinitely often. In the present work it is shown that adding to the primes a much thinner set, called almost prime powers, the union of the set of primes and almost prime powers contains already infinitely many bounded gaps. More precisely it is shown that if we add to the set of primes either almost prime squares having exactly two, nearly equal prime factors or if we add to the set of primes almost prime cubes having exactly three, nearly equal prime fac…
Denote by $\mathbb{N}$ and $\mathbb{P}$ the set of all positive integers and prime numbers, respectively. Let $\mathbb{P}=\{p_1<p_2<\dots <p_n<\dots\}$, where $p_n$ is the $n$-th prime number. For $k\in\mathbb{N}$ we recursively define subsequences $(p^{(k)}_n)_{n=1}^{+\infty}$ of the sequence $(p_n)_{n=1}^{+\infty}$ in the following way: let $p_n^{(1)}=p_n$ and $p_n^{(k+1)}=p_{p_n^{(k)}}$. In this paper we study and describe some interesting properties of the sets $\mathbb{P}_k=\{p_1^{(k)}<p_2^{(k)}<\dots<p_n^{(k)}<\dots\}$, $\mathbb{P}_n^{\mathrm{T}}=\{p_n^{(1)}<p_n^{(2)}<\dots<p_n^{(k)}<\do…
We consider the distribution of spacings between consecutive elements in subsets of Z/qZ where q is highly composite and the subsets are defined via the Chinese remainder theorem. We give a sufficient criterion for the spacing distribution to be Poissonian as the number of prime factors of q tends to infinity, and as an application we show that the value set of a generic polynomial modulo q have Poisson spacings. We also study the spacings of subsets of Z/q_1q_2Z that are created via the Chinese remainder theorem from subsets of Z/q_1Z and Z/q_2Z (for q_1,q_2 coprime), and give criteria for wh…
We study the spacing of the primes using methods from information theory. In information theory, the equivalence of continuous and discrete representations of information is established by Shannon sampling theory. Here, we use Shannon sampling methods to construct continuous functions whose varying bandwidth follows the distribution of the prime numbers. The Fourier transforms of these signals spike at frequently occurring spacings between the primes. We find prominent spikes, in particular, at the primorials. Previously, the primorials have been conjectured to be the most frequent gaps betwee…
Sign changes of Kloosterman sums with moduli having at most six prime factors
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Shaanxi Normal University(陕西师范大学数学与统计学院);Research Center for Number Theory and Its Applications, Northwest University(西北大学数论及其应用研究中心)
In his Classical approximation to the Twin prime problem, Selberg proved that for $x$ sufficiently large, there is an $n \in (x,2x)$ such that $2^{Ω(n)}+2^{Ω(n+2)} \leq λ$ with $λ=14$, where $Ω(n)$ is the number of prime factors of $n$ counted with multiplicity. This enabled him to show that for infinitely many $n$, $n(n+2)$ has atmost $5$ prime factors, with one having atmost $2$ and the other having atmost $3$ prime factors. By adopting Selberg's approach and using a refinement suggested by Selberg, we improve this value of $λ$ to about $λ=12.59$.
We study the distribution of spacings between squares modulo q, where q is square-free and highly composite, in the limit as the number of prime factors of q goes to infinity. We show that all correlation functions are Poissonian, which among other things, implies that the spacings between nearest neighbors, normalized to have unit mean, have an exponential distribution.
The integers $n=\prod_{i=1}^r p_i^{a_i}$ and $m=\prod_{i=1}^r p_i^{b_i}$ having the same prime factors are called exponentially coprime if $(a_i,b_i)=1$ for every $1\le i\le r$. We estimate the number of pairs of exponentially coprime integers $n,m\le x$ having the prime factors $p_1,...,p_r$ and show that the asymptotic density of pairs of exponentially coprime integers having $r$ fixed prime divisors is $(ζ(2))^{-r}$.
We show that for every positive integer $k$, there exist $k$ consecutive primes having the property that if any digit of any one of the primes, including any of the infinitely many leading zero digits, is changed, then that prime becomes composite.
We analyze the probability that, for a fixed finite set of primes S, a random, monic, degree n polynomial f(x) with integer coefficients in a box of side B around 0 satisfies: (i) f(x) is irreducible over the rationals, with splitting field over the rationals having Galois group $S_n$; (ii) the polynomial discriminant Disc(f) is relatively prime to all primes in S; (iii) f(x) has a prescribed splitting type at each prime p in S. The limit probabilities as $B \to \infty$ are described in terms of values of a one-parameter family of measures on $S_n$, called splitting measures, with parameter $z…
For every even integer N, denote by D_{1,2}(N) the number of representations of N as a sum of a prime and an integer having at most two prime factors. In this paper, we give a new lower bound for D_{1,2}(N).
We consider the representation of primes as a sum of a prime and twice a triangular number. We prove that a subset of the primes having density 1 is expressible in this form. We conjecture that every odd prime number is expressible as a sum of a twin prime and twice a triangular number. We show that this conjecture implies the existence of infinitely many twin primes.
Diophantine approximation with integers having no large prime factors
Institut Élie Cartan de Lorraine, Université de Lorraine, CNRS(洛林埃利·嘉当研究所, 洛林大学, 法国国家科学研究中心);Indian Institute of Science Education & Research Kolkata(加尔各答印度科学与教育研究所)
Question 10208b (1992) of the American Mathematical Monthly asked: does there exist an increasing sequence $\{a_k\}$ of positive integers and a constant $B > 0$ having the property that $\{ a_k + n\}$ contains no more than $B$ primes for every integer $n$? A positive answer to this question became known as Golomb's conjecture. In this note we give a negative answer, making use of recent progress in prime number theory.
I present a new property of prime numbers that leads to a generalization of Cramer's conjecture. The study of the gap between consecutive primes is treated as a special case of the gap between consecutive terms of sequences having a certain property called pseudo equidistribution. Both rigorous as well as heuristic arguments are given in support of the generalized Cramer's conjectures.
Let $q\geqslant 2$ be a fixed prime power. We prove an asymptotic formula for counting the number of monic polynomials that are of degree $n$ and have exactly $k$ irreducible factors over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. We also compare our results with the analogous existing ones in the integer case, where one studies all the natural numbers up to $x$ with exactly $k$ prime factors. In particular, we show that the number of monic polynomials grows at a surprisingly higher rate when $k$ is a little larger than $\log n$ than what one would speculate from looking at the integer case.
Four functions counting the number of subsets of $\{1, 2, ..., n\}$ having particular properties are defined by Nathanson and generalized by many authors. They derive explicit formulas for all four functions. In this paper, we point out that we need to compute only one of them as the others will follow as a consequence. Moreover, our method is simpler and leads to more general results than those in the literature.
This paper studies integer solutions to the Diophantine equation A+B=C in which none of A, B, C have a large prime factor. We set H(A, B,C) = max(|A|, |B|, |C|), and consider primitive solutions (gcd}(A, B, C)=1) having no prime factor p larger than (log H(A, B,C))^K, for a given finite K. On the assumption that the Generalized Riemann hypothesis (GRH) holds, we show that for any K > 8 there are infinitely many such primitive solutions having no prime factor larger than (log H(A, B, C))^K. We obtain in this range an asymptotic formula for the number of such suitably weighted primitive solution…
Goldston, Pintz and Yıldırım have shown that if the primes have `level of distribution' $θ$ for some $θ>1/2$ then there exists a constant $C(θ)$, such that there are infinitely many integers $n$ for which the interval $[n,n+C(θ)]$ contains two primes. We show under the same assumption that for any integer $k\ge 1$ there exists constants $D(θ,k)$ and $r(θ,k)$, such that there are infinitely many integers $n$ for which the interval $[n,n+D(θ,k)]$ contains two primes and $k$ almost-primes, with all of the almost-primes having at most $r(θ,k)$ prime factors. If $θ$ can be taken as large as $1-ε$, …
Let $Φ_n(x)$ denote the $n$th cyclotomic polynomial. In 1968 Sister Marion Beiter conjectured that $a_n(k)$, the coefficient of $x^k$ in $Φ_n(x)$, satisfies $|a_n(k)|\le (p+1)/2$ in case $n=pqr$ with $p<q<r$ primes (in this case $Φ_n(x)$ is said to be ternary). Since then several results towards establishing her conjecture have been proved (for example $|a_n(k)|\le 3p/4$). Here we show that, nevertheless, Beiter's conjecture is false for every $p\ge 11$. We also prove that given any $ε>0$ there exist infinitely many triples $(p_j,q_j,r_j)$ with $p_1<p_2<... $ consecutive primes such that $|a_{…
Let $p$ be a prime. If an integer $g$ generates a subgroup of index $t$ in $(\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z)^*,$ then we say that $g$ is a $t$-near primitive root modulo $p$. We point out the easy result that each primitive residue class contains a positive natural density subset of primes $p$ not having $g$ as a $t$-near primitive root and prove a more difficult variant.
We study the concentration of the distribution of an additive function, when the sequence of prime values of $f$ decays fast and has good spacing properties. In particular, we prove a conjecture by Erdos and Katai on the concentration of $f(n)=\sum_{p|n}(\log p)^{-c}$ when $c>1$.
Let $f(n)$ be the number of distinct exponents in the prime factorization of the natural number $n$. We prove some results about the distribution of $f(n)$. In particular, for any positive integer $k$, we obtain that $$ \#\{n \leq x : f(n) = k\} \sim A_k x $$ and $$ \#\{n \leq x : f(n) = ω(n) - k\} \sim \frac{B x (\log \log x)^k}{k! \log x} , $$ as $x \to +\infty$, where $ω(n)$ is the number of prime factors of $n$ and $A_k, B > 0$ are some explicit constants. The latter asymptotic extends a result of Aktaş and Ram Murty about numbers having mutually distinct exponents in their prime factoriza…
A positive integer is called an $E_j$-number if it is the product of $j$ distinct primes. We prove that there are infinitely many triples of $E_2$-numbers within a gap size of $32$ and infinitely many triples of $E_3$-numbers within a gap size of $15$. Assuming the Elliot-Halberstam conjecture for primes and $E_2$-numbers, we can improve these gaps to $12$ and $5$, respectively. We can obtain even smaller gaps for almost primes, almost prime powers, or integers having the same exponent pattern in the their prime factorizations. In particular, if $d(x)$ denotes the number of divisors of $x$, we…
A nonempty finite set of positive integers A is relatively prime if gcd(A) = 1 and it is relatively prime to n if gcd(A [ fng) = 1. The number of nonempty subsets of A which are relatively prime to n is Φ(A, n) and the number of such subsets of cardinality k is Φ_k(A, n). Given positive integers l1, l2, m2, and n such that l1 <= l2 <= m2 we give Φ([1;m1][[l2;m2]; n) along with Phi_k([1;m1] [ [l2;m2]; n). Given positive integers l;m, and n such that l <= m we count for any subset A of {l,l+1,...,m} the number of its supersets in [l;m] which are relatively prime and we count the number of such s…
Following Bright and Newton, we construct an explicit K$3$ surface over the rational numbers having good reduction at 2, and for which 2 is the only prime at which weak approximation is obstructed.
Given a density t in (0,1], and a prime p, let S be any subset of F_p having at least tp elements, and having the least number of three-term arithmetic progressions mod p among all subsets of F_p with at least tp elements. Define N(t,p) to be 1/p^2 times the number of three-term arithmetic progressions in S modulo p. Note that N(t,p) does not depend on S -- it only depends on t and p. An old result of Varnavides shows that for fixed t, N(t,p) > c(t) > 0 for all primes p sufficiently large. But, does N(t,p) converge to a limit as p -> infinity? We prove that it does.
Let $n$ be a positive integer and let $A$ be nonempty finite set of positive integers. We say that $A$ is relatively prime if $\gcd(A) =1$ and that $A$ is relatively prime to $n$ if $\gcd(A,n)=1$. In this work we count the number of nonempty subsets of $A$ which are relatively prime and the number of nonempty subsets of $A$ which are relatively prime to $n$. Related formulas are also obtained for the number of such subsets having some fixed cardinality. This extends previous work for the cases where $A$ is an interval or a set in arithmetic progression. Applications include: a) An exact formul…
Infinite exponential sequences of distinct prime numbers of the form $\lfloor a c^{n^d}+b\rfloor$, $n\geq 0$, are proved to exist for well chosen real constants $a>0$, $b$, $c>1$, $d>1$, assuming Cramer's conjecture on prime gaps. There is an infinity of such prime sequences. Sequences having the least possible growth rate are of particular interest. This work's focus is on prime sequences with $a=1$, $b \in \{0,1\}$, that have the smallest possible constant $c$ given $d>1$, and sequences with the smallest possible $d$, given $c=2$. In particular, we prove the existence of the four infinite ex…
Assuming the well-known conjecture that [x,x+x^t] contains a prime for t > 0 and x sufficiently large, we prove: For 0 < r < 1, there exists 0 < s < r < 1, 0 < d < 1, and infinitely many primes q such that if S is a subset of Z/qZ having density at least s, and having the least number of 3-term arithemtic progressions among all sets of density at least s, then S is nearly translation invariant in a very strong sense. Namely, there exists 0 <= b <= q-1 such that |S intersect (S + bj)| = (1-g(s))|S|, for every 0 < j < q^d, where g(s) -> 0 as s -> 0. A curious feature of the proof is that Behrend…
Given an algebraic curve C/Q having points everywhere locally and endowed with a suitable involution, we show that there exists a positive density family of prime quadratic twists of C violating the Hasse principle. The result applies in particular to w_N-Atkin-Lehner twists of most modular curves X_0(N) and to w_p-Atkin-Lehner twists of certain Shimura curves X^{D+}.
Let $p_{1}<p_2<... <p_ν<...$ be the sequence of prime numbers and let $m$ be a positive integer. We give a strong asymptotic formula for the distribution of the set of integers having prime factorizations of the form $p_{m^{k_1}}p_{m^{k_{2}}...p_{m^{k_{n}}}$ with $k_{1}\le k_{2}\le...\le k_{n}$. Such integers originate in various combinatorial counting problems; when $m=2$, they arise as Matula numbers of certain rooted trees.
Intersective polynomials are polynomials in $\Z[x]$ having roots every modulus. For example, $P_1(n)=n^2$ and $P_2(n)=n^2-1$ are intersective polynomials, but $P_3(n)=n^2+1$ is not. The purpose of this note is to deduce, using results of Green-Tao \cite{gt-chen} and Lucier \cite{lucier}, that for any intersective polynomial $h$, inside any subset of positive relative density of the primes, we can find distinct primes $p_1, p_2$ such that $p_1-p_2=h(n)$ for some integer $n$. Such a conclusion also holds in the Chen primes (where by a Chen prime we mean a prime number $p$ such that $p+2$ is the …