We propose the formula for the number of pairs of consecutive primes $p_n, p_{n+1}<x$ separated by gap $d=p_{n+1}-p_n$ expressed directly by the number of all primes $<x$, i.e. by $π(x)$. As the application of this formula we formulate 7 conjectures, among others for the maximal gap between two consecutive primes smaller than $x$, for the generalized Brun's constants and the first occurrence of a given gap $d$. Also the leading term $\log \log(x)$ in the prime harmonic sum is reproduced from our guesses correctly. These conjectures are supported by the computer data.
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 show that a positive proportion of all gaps between consecutive primes are small gaps. We provide several quantitative results, some unconditional and some conditional, in this flavour.
In the present work we prove a common generalization of Maynard-Tao's recent result about consecutive bounded gaps between primes and on the Erdős-Rankin bound about large gaps between consecutive primes. The work answers in a strong form a 60 years old problem of Erdös, which asked whether the ratio of two consecutive primegaps can be infinitely often arbitrarily small, and arbitrarily large, respectively.
Assuming the Riemann Hypothesis we show that there exist infinitely many consecutive zeros of the Riemann zeta-function whose gaps are greater than 2.9 times the average spacing.
This text shows the existence of large (3.54 times the average) gaps between consecutive zeros, on the critical line, of some Dirichlet $L$-functions $L(s,χ),$ with $χ$ being an even primitive Dirichlet character.
For any positive integer $k$, we show that infinitely often, perfect $k$-th powers appear inside very long gaps between consecutive prime numbers, that is, gaps of size $$ c_k \frac{\log p \log_2 p \log_4 p}{(\log_3 p)^2}, $$ where $p$ is the smaller of the two primes.
Combining the mollifiers, we exhibit other choices of coefficients that improve the results on large gaps between the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function. Precisely, assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis (GRH), we show that there exist infinitely many consecutive gaps greater than 3.033 times the average spacing.
We derive heuristically formula for the $k$--moments $M_k(x)$ of the gaps between consecutive primes$<x $ represented directly by $x$$π(x)$ --- the number of primes up to: $M_k(x)= Γ(k+1)x^k/π^{k-1}(x)+\mathcal{O}(x)$, We illustrate obtained results by computer data.
We prove a modification as well as an improvement of a result of K. Ford, D. R. Heath-Brown and S. Konyagin concerning prime avoidance of square-free numbers and perfect powers of prime numbers.
Assuming the Riemann Hypothesis, we show that infinitely often consecutive non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta-function differ by at most 0.5155 times the average spacing and infinitely often they differ by at least 2.69 times the average spacing.
We derive heuristically approximate formulas for the negative $k$--moments $M_{-k}(x)$ of the gaps between consecutive primes$<x $ represented directly by $π(x)$ --- the number of primes up to $x$. In particular we propose an analytical formula for the sum of reciprocals of gaps between consecutive primes $<x : ~ M_{-1}(x)\sim \frac{π^2(x)}{x-2π(x)}\log\Big(\frac{x}{2π(x)}\Big) \sim x \log \log(x)/\log^2(x)$. We illustrate obtained results by the enormous computer data up to $x=4\times 10^{18}$.
Feng and Wu introduced a new general coefficient sequence into Montgomery and Odlyzko's method for exhibiting irregularity in the gaps between consecutive zeros of $ζ(s)$ assuming the Riemann Hypothesis. They used a special case of their sequence to improve upon earlier results on the gaps. In this paper we consider an equivalent form of the general sequence of Feng and Wu, and introduce a somewhat less general sequence $\{a_n\}$ for which we write the Montgomery-Odlyzko expressions explicitly. As an application, we give the following slight improvement of Feng and Wu's result: infinitely ofte…
In this paper, we derive new lower bounds for the normalized distances between consecutive maxima of the Riemann zeta-function on the critical line subject to the truth of the Riemann hypothesis. The method of our proofs relies on a Sobolev type inequality of one dimension and an Opial type inequality with best possible constants.
We show that for any sufficiently large $T,$ there exists a subinterval of $[T,2T]$ of length at least $2.766 \times \frac{2π}{\log{T}},$ in which the function $t \mapsto ζ(1/2 + it)$ has no zeros.
Let $α, β\geq 0$ and $α+ β< 1$. In this short note, we show that $\liminf_{n \to \infty} p_n^β(p_{n+1}^α- p_n^α) = 0$, where $p_n$ is the $n$th prime. This notes an improvement over results of Sándor and gives additional evidence towards a conjecture of Andrica. This follows directly from recent results on prime pairs from Maynard, Tao, Zhang.
Let $k\geq 2$ be a fixed natural number. We establish the existence of infinitely many pairs of consecutive primes $p_n$, $p_{n+1}$ satisfying $$ p_{n+1}-p_n\geq c\:\frac{\log p_n\: \log_2 p_n\: \log_4 p_n}{\log_3 p_n}\:,$$ with $c$ being a fixed positive constant, for which the interval $(p_n, p_{n+1})$ contains the $k$-th power of a prime number.
Let p_n denote the sequence of all primes and let d_n=p_n-p_{n-1} denote the sequence of all gaps between consecutive primes. In 1948 Erdős and Turán showed that d_{n+1}-d_n changes sign infinitely often and together with Pólya asked for a necessary and sufficient condition that a fixed linear combination of r>1 consecutive prime gaps d_{n+i} i=(1,2,...r) should change sign infinitely often as n runs through the sequence of all natural numbers. They conjectured that the condition is that the non zero values among the coefficients of the linear combination cannot all have the same sign but they…
Let $p_n$ denote the $n$-th prime number, $\{q_n\}$ be a sequence of positive numbers and $x\in\mathbb{R}$. In this note we prove that the inequality $$q_n p_{n+1}^{x}-q_{n+1}p_{n}^{x}<p_{n}^{x}p_{n+1}^{x-1}, $$ holds for infinitely many values of $n$. As it is shown, the key ingredient to obtain this behaviour is a consequence of an extension of the Kummer's characterization of convergent series of positive terms.
Let $G(X)$ denote the size of the largest gap between consecutive primes below $X$. Answering a question of Erdos, we show that $$G(X) \geq f(X) \frac{\log X \log \log X \log \log \log \log X}{(\log \log \log X)^2},$$ where $f(X)$ is a function tending to infinity with $X$. Our proof combines existing arguments with a random construction covering a set of primes by arithmetic progressions. As such, we rely on recent work on the existence and distribution of long arithmetic progressions consisting entirely of primes.
We study the gaps between consecutive prime numbers directly through Eratosthenes sieve. Using elementary methods, we identify a recursive relation for these gaps and for specific sequences of consecutive gaps, known as constellations. Using this recursion we can estimate the numbers of a gap or of a constellation that occur between a prime and its square. This recursion also has explicit implications for open questions about gaps between prime numbers, including three questions posed by Erdös and Turán.
The most common difference that occurs among the consecutive primes less than or equal to $x$ is called a jumping champion. Occasionally there are ties. Therefore there can be more than one jumping champion for a given $x$. In 1999 A. Odlyzko, M. Rubinstein, and M. Wolf provided heuristic and empirical evidence in support of the conjecture that the numbers greater than 1 that are jumping champions are 4 and the primorials 2, 6, 30, 210, 2310,... As a step towards proving this conjecture they introduced a second weaker conjecture that any fixed prime $p$ divides all sufficiently large jumping c…
Recently Oliver and Soundararajan made conjectures based on computational enumerations about the frequency of occurrence of pairs of last digits for consecutive primes. By studying Eratosthenes sieve, we have identified discrete dynamic systems that exactly model the populations of gaps across stages of Eratosthenes sieve. Our models provide some insight into the observed biases in the occurrences of last digits in consecutive primes, and the models suggest that the biases will ultimately be reversed for large enough primes. The exact model for populations of gaps across stages of Eratosthenes…
In a previous paper, the authors proved that in any system of three linear forms satisfying obvious necessary local conditions, there are at least two forms that infinitely often assume $E_2$-values; i.e., values that are products of exactly two primes. We use that result to prove that there are inifinitely many integers $x$ that simultaneously satisfy $$ω(x)=ω(x+1)=4, Ω(x)=Ω(x+1)=5, \text{and} d(x)=d(x+1)=24.$$ Here, $ω(x), Ω(x), d(x)$ represent the number of prime divisors of $x$, the number of prime power divisors of $x$, and the number of divisors of $x$, respectively. We also prove simila…
We show that large gaps between smooth numbers are infrequent. The key new tool is a novel mean value bound for a special type of Dirichlet polynomial.
In a surprising recent work, Lemke Oliver and Soundararajan noticed how experimental data exhibits erratic distributions for consecutive pairs of primes in arithmetic progressions, and proposed a heuristic model based on the Hardy--Littlewood conjectures containing a large secondary term, which fits the data very well. In this paper, we study consecutive pairs of sums of squares in arithmetic progressions, and develop a similar heuristic model based on the Hardy--Littlewood conjecture for sums of squares, which also explain the biases in the experimental data. In the process, we prove several …
Erdös conjectured that the set J of limit points of d_n/logn contains all nonnegative numbers, where d_n denotes the nth primegap. The author proved a year ago (arXiv: 1305.6289) that J contains an interval of type [0,c] with a positive ineffective value c. In the present work we extend this result for a large class of normalizing functions. The only essential requirement is that the function f(n) replacing logn should satisfy f(n)<<lognloglognloglogloglogn/(logloglogn)^2 (with a small implied constant), the well-known Erdös-Rankin bound for the largest known gaps between consecutive primes. T…
In the present work we prove a number of surprising results about gaps between consecutive primes and arithmetic progressions in the sequence of generalized twin primes which could not have been proven without the recent fantastic achievement of Yitang Zhang about the existence of bounded gaps between consecutive primes. Most of these results would have belonged to the category of science fiction a decade ago. However, the presented results are far from being immediate consequences of Zhang's famous theorem: they require various new ideas, other important properties of the applied sieve functi…
Let $p_n$ denote the $n$-th prime. For any $m\geq 1$, there exist infinitely many $n$ such that $p_{n}-p_{n-m}\leq C_m$ for some large constant $C_m>0$, and $$p_{n+1}-p_n\geq \frac{c_m\log n\log\log n\log\log\log\log n}{\log\log\log n}, $$ for some small constant $c_m>0$. Furthermore, we also obtain a related result concerning the least primes in arithmetic progressions.
Assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis(GRH), we show that infinitely often consecutive non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta-function differ by at least 3.072 times the average spacing.
Assuming the Riemann Hypothesis, it is known that there are infinitely many consecutive pairs of zeros of the Riemann zeta-function within 0.515396 times the average spacing. This is obtained using the method of Montgomery and Odlyzko. We prove that this method can never find infinitely many pairs of consecutive zeros within 0.5042 times the average spacing.
We survey some past conditional results on the distribution of large differences between consecutive primes and examine how the Hardy-Littlewood prime k-tuples conjecture can be applied to this question.
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 study the value-distribution of Dirichlet polynomials on the critical line $\Re(s)=\tfrac{1}{2}$. As a consequence, we prove a corollary on small consecutive gaps between zeros of the Riemann zeta function. We also examine the distribution of zeros under the so-called alternative hypothesis and present a new approach to the problem of gaps between the zeros.
We prove that there exist infinitely many consecutive zeros of the Riemann zeta-function on the critical line whose gaps are greater than $3.18$ times the average spacing. Using a modification of our method, we also show that there are even larger gaps between the multiple zeros of the zeta function on the critical line (if such zeros exist).
Assuming the Riemann Hypothesis, we show that infinitely often consecutive non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta-function differ by at least 2.7327 times the average spacing and infinitely often they differ by at most 0.5154 times the average spacing.
This paper is intended as a sequel to a paper arXiv:0803.2636 written by four of the coauthors here. In the paper, they proved a stronger form of the Erdős-Mirksy conjecture which states that there are infinitely many positive integers $x$ such that $d(x)=d(x+1)$ where $d(x)$ denotes the number of divisors of $x$. This conjecture was first proven by Heath-Brown in 1984, but the method did not reveal the nature of the set of values $d(x)$ for such $x$. In particular, one could not conclude that there was any particular value $A$ for which $d(x)=d(x+1)=A$ infinitely often. In the previous paper …
In this paper, we apply the method of Maynard and Tao to the set of products of two distinct primes (E2-numbers). We obtain several results on the distribution of E2-numbers and primes. Among others, the result of Goldston, Pintz, Yildirim and Graham on small gaps between m consecutive E2-numbers is improved.
Let $K$ be a quadratic number field and $ζ_K(s)$ be the associated Dedekind zeta-function. We show that there are infinitely many normalized gaps between consecutive zeros of $ζ_K(s)$ on the critical line which are greater than $2.866$ times the average spacing.
Let $m$ be a natural number, and let $\mathcal{Q}$ be a set containing at least $\exp(C m)$ primes. We show that one can find infinitely many strings of $m$ consecutive primes each of which has some $q\in\mathcal{Q}$ as a primitive root, all lying in an interval of length $O_{\mathcal{Q}}(\exp(C'm))$. This is a bounded gaps variant of a theorem of Gupta and Ram Murty. We also prove a result on an elliptic analogue of Artin's conjecture. Let $E/\mathbb{Q}$ be an elliptic curve with an irrational $2$-torsion point. Assume GRH. Then for every $m$, there are infinitely many strings of $m$ consecut…
We show that there exists pairs of consecutive primes less than $x$ whose difference is larger than $t(1+o(1))(\log{x})(\log\log{x})(\log\log\log\log{x})(\log\log\log{x})^{-2}$ for any fixed $t$. Our proof works by incorporating recent progress in sieve methods related to small gaps between primes into the Erdos-Rankin construction. This answers a well-known question of Erdos.
We show that the generalized Riemann hypothesis implies that there are infinitely many consecutive zeros of the Riemann zeta function whose spacing is 2.9125 times larger than the average spacing. This is deduced from the calculation of the second moment of the Riemann zeta function multiplied by a Dirichlet polynomial averaged over the zeros of the zeta function.
Small values of $|ζ(1/2+it)|$ are investigated, using the value distribution results of A. Selberg. This gives an asymptotic formula for $μ(\{0 < t \le T : |ζ(1/2+it)| \le c\})$. Some related problems involving values of $|ζ(1/2+it)|$ and gaps between the consecutive ordinates of zeros of $ζ(s)$ are also discussed.
As a refinement of the celebrated recent work of Yitang Zhang we show that any admissible k-tuple of integers contains at least two primes and almost primes in each component infinitely often if k is at least 181000. This implies that there are infinitely many gaps between consecutive primes of size at most 2530338, with an improved admissible k-tuple of Andrew W. Sutherland to 2326476.
We work out the optimization problem, initiated by K. Soundararajan, for the choice of the underlying polynomial P used in the construction of the weight function in the Goldston--Pintz--Yildirim method for finding small gaps between primes. First we reformulate to a maximization problem on L^2[0,1] for a self-adjoint operator T, the norm of which is then the maximal eigenvalue of T. To find eigenfunctions and eigenvalues, we derive a differential equation which can be explicitly solved. The aimed maximal value is S(k)=4/(k+ck^{1/3}), achieved by the (k-1)st integral of x^{1-k/2}J_{k-2}(a_1\sq…
In this paper, using the well known fact that the series of reciprocals of primes diverges, we obtain a general inequality for gaps of consecutive primes that holds for infinitely many primes. As it is shown the key ingredient for this direct approach is a consequence of the the Kummer's characterization of summable sequences of positive terms. Some interesting consequences are then presented. In particular, we show how the twin-prime conjecture is related to our main result.
We use the asymptotic large sieve, developed by the authors, to prove that if the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis is true, then there exist many Dirichlet L-functions that have a pair of consecutive zeros closer together than 0.37 times their average spacing. More generally, we investigate zero spacings within the family of twists by Dirichlet characters of a fixed L-function and give precise bounds for small gaps which depend only on the degree of the L-function.
One field of particular interest in Number Theory concerns the gaps between consecutive primes. Within the last few years, very important results have been achieved on how small these gaps can be. The strongest of these results were obtained by Dan Goldston, Janos Pintz and Cem Yalcin Yildirim. The present work begins by generalizing their results so that they can be applied to related problems in a more direct manner. Additionally, we improve the bound for $F_2$ (concerning the maximal gap in a block of three primes) obtained by the authors' first paper with our generalization.
Let $L(s,f)$ be an $L$-function associated to a primitive (holomorphic or Maass) cusp form $f$ on GL(2) over $\mathbb{Q}$. Combining mean-value estimates of Montgomery and Vaughan with a method of Ramachandra, we prove a formula for the mixed second moments of derivatives of $L(1/2+it,f)$ and, via a method of Hall, use it to show that there are infinitely many gaps between consecutive zeros of $L(s,f)$ along the critical line that are at least $\sqrt 3 = 1.732...$ times the average spacing. Using general pair correlation results due to Murty and Perelli in conjunction with a technique of Montg…
