For $k\ge1$, a $k$-almost prime is a positive integer with exactly $k$ prime factors, counted with multiplicity. In this article we give elementary proofs of precise asymptotics for the reciprocal sum of $k$-almost primes. Our results match the strength of those of classical analytic methods. We also study the limiting behavior of the constants appearing in these estimates, which may be viewed as higher analogues of the Mertens constant $β=0.2614...$ Further, in the case $k=2$ of semiprimes we give yet finer-scale and explicit estimates, as well as a conjecture.
In 1874, Mertens famously proved an asymptotic formula for the product $p/(p-1)$ over all primes $p$ up to $x$. On the other hand, one may expand Mertens' prime product into series over numbers $n$ with only small prime factors. It is natural to restrict such series to numbers $n$ with a fixed number $k$ of prime factors. In this article, we obtain formulae for these series for each $k$, which together dissect Mertens' original estimate. The proof is by elementary methods of a combinatorial flavor.
In 1874, Mertens proved the approximate formula for partial Euler product for Riemann zeta function at $s=1$, which is called Mertens' theorem. In this paper, we generalize Mertens' theorem for Selberg class and show the prime number theorem for Selberg class.
In this note we give some identities which involve the Mertens function M(n). Our proofs are combinatorial with relatively prime subsets as a main tool.
For $k\ge1$, let $R_k(x)$ denote the reciprocal sum up to $x$ of numbers with $k$ prime factors, counted with multiplicity. In prior work, the authors obtained estimates for $R_k(x)$, extending Mertens' second theorem, as well as a finer-scale estimate for $R_2(x)$ up to $(\log x)^{-N}$ error for any $N > 0$. In this article, we establish the limiting behavior of the higher Mertens constants from the $R_2(x)$ estimate. We also extend these results to $R_3(x)$, and we remark on the general case $k\ge4$.
Myriad articles are devoted to Mertens's theorem. In yet another, we merely wish to draw attention to a proof by Hardy, which uses a Tauberian theorem of Landau that "leads to the conclusion in a direct and elegant manner". Hardy's proof is also quite adaptable, and it is readily combined with well-known results from prime number theory. We demonstrate this by proving a version of the theorem for primes in arithmetic progressions with uniformity in the modulus, as well as a non-abelian analogue of this.
Extending a classical estimate of Mertens for the sum of the reciprocals of the first primes, we provide an explicit remainder formula for products of an arbitrary, but fixed, number of primes.
This note simplifies the proof of a recent result on the oscillation of the prime product in Martens Theorem, and provides a quantitative expression for the error term. In addition, the corresponding oscillation results for the finite sums of the reciprocal of the primes up to a fixed number and other finite sums and products are also given.
Assuming the validity of Riemann Hypothesis (RH), we derive the explicit bilateral estimates ("narrow passage") of the remainder in the modified Mertens asymptotic formula for the sums of primes' reciprocals. These results are reversable, thus yielding some new criteria for RH.
A highly strong upper estimate in the modified asymptotic formula for sums of the primes' reciprocals is proved to be necessary (as well as sufficient) in order the Ramanujan inequality holds true. Some other criteria in similar terms are also obtained.
We give explicit numerical values with 100 decimal digits for the constant in the Mertens product over primes in the arithmetic progressions $a \bmod q$, for $q \in \{3$, ..., $100\}$ and $(a, q) = 1$.
A square-free integer is a positive integer that is not divisible by the square of any prime. Merten's function, $M(x)$ is defined as the difference between the number of square free integers with an even number of prime factors and the number of those with an odd number of prime factors up to $x$. It's well known that $M(x)=O(x^{1/2+ε})$ is equivalent to Riemann Hypothesis. In this paper, we derive a new equation involving Merten's function that leads to a promising technique for Riemann Hypothesis.
We prove an asymptotic formula for the number of integers $\leq x$ which can be written as the product of $k ~(\geq 2)$ distinct primes $p_1\cdots p_k$ with each prime factor in an arithmetic progression $p_j\equiv a_j \bmod q$, $(a_j, q)=1$ $(q \geq 3, 1\leq j\leq k)$. For any $A>0$, our result is uniform for $2\leq k\leq A\log\log x$. Moreover, we show that, there are large biases toward certain arithmetic progressions $(a_1 \bmod q, \cdots, a_k \bmod q)$, and such biases have connections with Mertens' theorem and the least prime in arithmetic progressions.
For all $k \geq 3$, we show how one can explicitly construct an infinite family of $k$-regular graphs all of which have second largest eigenvalue satisfying the bound $O(k^{1/2})$. This resolves an open problem of Reingold, Vadhan and Wigderson.
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…
Let $A$ be a subset of primes up to $x$. If we assume $A$ is well-distributed (in the Siegel-Walfisz sense) in any arithmetic progressions to moduli $q\leqslant(\log x)^c$ for any $c>0$, then the sumset $A+A$ has density 1/2 in the natural numbers as $x$ tends to infinity, which also yields almost all even positive integers could be represented as the sums of two primes in $A$ as $x$ tends to infinity. This result, improving the previous results in such special case, could be compared with the classical estimation for the exceptional set of binary Goldbach problem.
The method of Murty and Cioabă shows how one can use results about gaps between primes to construct families of almost-Ramanujan graphs. In this paper we give a simpler construction which avoids the search for perfect matchings and thus eliminates the need for computation. A couple of recent explicit bounds on the gap between consecutive primes are then used to give the construction of $k$-regular families with explicit lower bounds on the spectral gaps. We then show that a result of Ben-Aroya and Ta-Shma can be improved using our simpler construction on the assumption of the Riemann Hypothesi…
Recent results of Bourgain and Shparlinski imply that for almost all primes $p$ there is a multiple $mp$ that can be written in binary as $mp= 1+2^{m_1}+ \cdots +2^{m_k}, \quad 1\leq m_1 < \cdots < m_k,$ with $k=66$ or $k=16$, respectively. We show that $k=6$ (corresponding to Hamming weight $7$) suffices. We also prove there are infinitely many primes $p$ with a multiplicative subgroup $A=<g>\subset \mathbb{F}_p^*$, for some $g \in \{2,3,5\}$, of size $|A|\gg p/(\log p)^3$, where the sum-product set $A\cdot A+ A\cdot A$ does not cover $\mathbb{F}_p$ completely.
Analogues of the prime number theorem and Merten's theorem are well-known for dynamical systems with hyperbolic behaviour. In this paper a 3-adic extension of the circle doubling map is studied. The map has a 3-adic eigendirection in which it behaves like an isometry, and the loss of hyperbolicity leads to weaker asymptotic results on orbit counting than those obtained for hyperbolic maps.
We adopt A. J. Irving's sieve method to study the almost-prime values produced by products of irreducible polynomials evaluated at prime arguments. This generalizes the previous results of Irving and Kao, who separately examined the almost-prime values of a single irreducible polynomial evaluated at prime arguments.
Let $A$ be a set in a prime field $\mathbb{F}_p$. In this paper, we prove that $d\times d$ matrices with entries in $A$ determine almost $|A|^{3+\frac{1}{45}}$ distinct determinants and almost $|A|^{2-\frac{1}{6}}$ distinct permanents when $|A|$ is small enough.
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…
By establishing an improved level of distribution we study almost primes of the form $f(p,n)$ where $f$ is an irreducible binary form over $\mathbb Z$.
In this paper we consider the equation $[p^{c}] + [m^{c}] = N$, where $N$ is a sufficiently large integer, and prove that if $1 < c < \frac{29}{28}$, then it has a solution in a prime $p$ and an almost prime $m$ with at most $\left[ \frac{52}{29 - 28 c}\right] + 1 $ prime factors.
We consider almost-primes of the form $f(p)$ where $f$ is an irreducible polynomial over $\mathbb Z$ and $p$ runs over primes. We improve a result of Richert for polynomials of degree at least $3$. In particular we show that, when the degree is large, there are infinitely many primes $p$ for which $f(p)$ has at most $°f+O(\log°f)$ prime factors.
We study Gaussian primes lying in narrow sectors, and show that almost all such sectors contain the expected number of primes, if the sectors are not too narrow.
In this paper we study quadratic forms which are universal when restricted to almost prime inputs, establishing finiteness theorems akin to the Conway--Schneeberger 15 theorem.
Let $\mathcal{P}_r$ denote an almost-prime with at most $r$ prime factors, counted according to multiplicity. In this paper, we establish a theorem of Bombieri-Vinogradov type for the Piatetski-Shapiro primes $p=[n^{1/γ}]$ with $\frac{85}{86}<γ<1$. Moreover, we use this result to prove that, for $0.9989445<γ<1$, there exist infinitely many Piatetski-Shapiro primes such that $p+2=\mathcal{P}_3$, which improves the previous results of Lu, Wang and Cai, and Peneva.
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…
We investigate, using the weighted linear sieve, the distribution of almost-primes among the residue classes (mod p) that generate the multiplicative group of reduced residue classes. We are concerned with finding an upper bound for the least prime or almost-prime primitive root (mod p) that holds uniformly for all p, analogous to Linnik's Theorem on a uniform upper bound for the least prime in a single arithmetic progression (mod p).
We investigate the problem of r almost-primes represented by sets of quadratic forms and give upper bounds for r. Our results extend work of Diamond and Halberstam in which they investigated the corresponding problem for polynomials.
We show that every sufficiently large integer is a sum of a prime and two almost prime squares, and also a sum of a smooth number and two almost prime squares. The number of such representations is of the expected order of magnitude. We likewise treat representations of shifted primes p-1 as sums of two almost prime squares. The methods involve a combination of analytic, automorphic and algebraic arguments to handle representations by restricted binary quadratic forms with a high degree of uniformity.
An integral quadratic polynomial (with positive definite quadratic part) is called almost universal if it represents all but finitely many positive integers. In this paper, we introduce the conductor of a quadratic polynomial, and give an effective characterization of almost universal ternary quadratic polynomials with odd prime power conductor.
Zhang has shown there are infinitely many intervals of bounded length containing two primes. It appears that the current techniques cannot prove that there are infinitely many intervals of bounded length containing three primes, even if strong conjectures such as the Elliott-Halberstam conjecture are assumed. We show that there are infinitely many intervals of length at most $10^8$ which contain two primes and a number with at most 31 prime factors.
We improve Irving's method of the double-sieve by using the DHR sieve. By extending the upper and lower sieve functions into their respective non-elementary ranges, we are able to make improvements on the previous records on the number of prime factors of irreducible polynomials at prime arguments. In particular, we prove that irreducible quadratics over $\mathbb{Z}$ satisfying necessary local conditions are $P_4$ infinitely often.
We show that as soon as $h\to \infty$ with $X \to \infty$, almost all intervals $(x-h\log X, x]$ with $x \in (X/2, X]$ contain a product of at most two primes. In the proof we use Richert's weighted sieve, with the arithmetic information eventually coming from results of Deshouillers and Iwaniec on averages of Kloosterman sums.
We improve Bombieri's asymptotic sieve to localise the variables. As a consequence, we prove, under a Elliott-Halberstam conjecture, that there exists an infinity of twins almost prime. Those are prime numbers $p$ such that for all $\varepsilon>0$, $p-2$ is either a prime number or can be written as $p_1 p_2$ where $p_1$ and $p_2$ are prime and $p_1<X^{\varepsilon}$, and we give the explicit asymptotic.
We prove that analogues of the Hardy-Littlewood generalised twin prime conjecture for almost primes hold on average. Our main theorem establishes an asymptotic formula for the number of integers $n=p_1p_2 \leq X$ such that $n+h$ is a product of exactly two primes which holds for almost all $|h|\leq H$ with $\log^{19+\varepsilon}X\leq H\leq X^{1-\varepsilon}$, under a restriction on the size of one of the prime factors of $n$ and $n+h$. Additionally, we consider correlations $n,n+h$ where $n$ is a prime and $n+h$ has exactly two prime factors, establishing an asymptotic formula which holds for …
In this paper we prove two results concerning Vinogradov's three primes theorem with primes that can be called almost twin primes. First, for any $m$, every sufficiently large odd integer $N$ can be written as a sum of three primes $p_1, p_2$ and $p_3$ such that, for each $i \in \{1,2,3\}$, the interval $[p_i, p_i + H]$ contains at least $m$ primes, for some $H = H(m)$. Second, every sufficiently large integer $N \equiv 3 \pmod{6}$ can be written as a sum of three primes $p_1, p_2$ and $p_3$ such that, for each $i \in \{1,2,3\}$, $p_i + 2$ has at most two prime factors.
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 $1-ε$, …
We show that there are infinitely many primes $p$ such that not only does $p + 2$ have at most two prime factors, but $p + 6$ also has a bounded number of prime divisors. This refines the well known result of Chen.
Sums over inverse s-th powers of semiprimes and k-almost primes are transformed into sums over products of powers of ordinary prime zeta functions. Multinomial coefficients known from the cycle decomposition of permutation groups play the role of expansion coefficients. Founded on a known convergence acceleration for the ordinary prime zeta functions, the sums and first derivatives are tabulated with high precision for indices k=2,...,6 and integer powers s=2,...,8.
Jagy and Kaplansky exhibited a table of 68 pairs of positive definite binary quadratic forms that represent the same odd primes and conjectured that this list is complete outside of "trivial" pairs. In this article, we find all pairs of such forms that represent the same primes outside of a finite set.
Let $α>1$ be irrational and of finite type, $β\in\mathbb{R}$. In this paper, it is proved that for $R\geqslant13$ and any fixed $c\in(1,c_R)$, there exist infinitely many primes in the intersection of Beatty sequence $\mathcal{B}_{α,β}$ and $\lfloor n^c\rfloor$, where $c_R$ is an explicit constant depending on $R$ herein, $n$ is a natural number with at most $R$ prime factors, counted with multiplicity.
Let $\mathcal{P}_r$ denote an almost-prime with at most $r$ prime factors, counted according to multiplicity. Suppose that $a$ and $q$ are positive integers satisfying $(a,q)=1$. Denote by $\mathcal{P}_2(a,q)$ the least almost-prime $\mathcal{P}_2$ which satisfies $\mathcal{P}_2\equiv a\pmod q$. In this paper, it is proved that for sufficiently large $q$, there holds \begin{equation*} \mathcal{P}_2(a,q)\ll q^{1.8345}. \end{equation*} This result constitutes an improvement upon that of Iwaniec, who obtained the same conclusion, but for the range $1.845$ in place of $1.8345$.
Let $p_n$ denote the $n^{th}$ prime. Goldston, Pintz, and Yildirim recently proved that $ \liminf_{n\to \infty} \frac{(p_{n+1}-p_n)}{\log p_n} =0.$ We give an alternative proof of this result. We also prove some corresponding results for numbers with two prime factors. Let $q_n$ denote the $n^{th}$ number that is a product of exactly two distinct primes. We prove that $\liminf_{n\to \infty} (q_{n+1}-q_n) \le 26.$ If an appropriate generalization of the Elliott-Halberstam Conjecture is true, then the above bound can be improved to 6.
