We show that there exists some $δ> 0$ such that, for any set of integers $B$ with $B\cap[1,Y]\gg Y^{1-δ}$ for all $Y \gg 1$, there are infinitely many primes of the form $a^2+b^2$ with $b\in B$. We prove a quasi-explicit formula for the number of primes of the form $a^2+b^2 \leq X$ with $b \in B$ for any $|B|=X^{1/2-δ}$ with $δ< 1/10$ and $B \subseteq [ηX^{1/2},(1-η)X^{1/2}] \cap \mathbb{Z}$, in terms of zeros of Hecke $L$-functions on $\mathbb{Q}(i)$. We obtain the expected asymptotic formula for the number of such primes provided that the set $B$ does not have a large subset which consists of multiples of a fixed large integer. In particular, we get an asymptotic formula if $B$ is a sparse subset of primes. For an arbitrary $B$ we obtain a lower bound for the number of primes with a weaker range for $δ$, by bounding the contribution from potential exceptional characters.
A distinguishing feature of certain intractable problems in prime number theory is the sparsity of the underlying sequence. Motivated by the general problem of finding primes in sparse polynomial sequences, we give an estimate for the number of primes of the shape $x^3 + 2y^3$ where $y$ is small.
In the present paper we investigate distributional properties of sparse sequences modulo almost all prime numbers. We obtain new results for a wide class of sparse sequences which in particular find applications on additive problems and the discrete Littlewood problem related to lower bound estimates of the $L_1$-norm of trigonometric sums.
For arbitrary $c_0>0$, if $A$ is a subset of the primes less than $x$ with cardinality $δx (\log x)^{-1}$ with $δ\geq (\log x)^{-c_0}$, then there exists a positive constant $c$ such that the cardinality of $A+A$ is larger than $c\, δx (\log\log x)^{-1}$.
We study the problem of writing Gaussian primes as the sum of two squares, both of which are interesting arithmetically, in particular, when one is the square of a prime and the other the square of an almost-prime.
We generalize a Theorem of Ricci and count Gaussian primes $\mathfrak{p}$ with short interval restrictions on both the norm and the argument of $\mathfrak{p}$.
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.
We investigate the distribution of $pθ$ modulo 1, where $θ$ is a complex number which is not contained in $\mathbb{Q}(i)$, and $p$ runs over the Gaussian primes.
It has been observed many times, both in the Monthly and elsewhere, that the set of all quotients of prime numbers is dense in the positive real numbers. In this short note we answer the related question: "Is the set of all quotients of Gaussian primes dense in the complex plane?"
We study the problem of Diophantine approximation on lines in $\mathbb{C}^2$ with numerators and denominators restricted to Gaussian primes. To this end, we develop analogs of well-known results on small fractional parts of $pγ$, $p$ running over the primes and $γ$ being a fixed irrational, for Gaussian primes.
In this paper we study Gaussian ring $\Z[i]$ with a focus on representing Gaussian Mersenne primes $G_p$ in the form $x^2+7y^2$. Interestingly when such a form exists, one can observe that, $x\equiv \pm 1\pmod{8}$ and $y\equiv 0\pmod{8}$. To prove this property of Gaussian Mersenne primes, we show that Gaussian Mersenne primes splits completely in the cyclic quartic unramified extension of $\Q(\sqrt{-14})$ and have a trivial Artin symbol in this extension. We generalize this result for $d\equiv 7\pmod{24}$. We also attempt to give an alternate proof using Artin's reciprocity law, which was ear…
We explore two questions about pseudo-polynomials, which are functions $f:\mathbb N \to \mathbb Z$ such that $k$ divides $f(n+k) - f(n)$ for all $n,k$. First, for certain arbitrarily sparse sets $R$, we construct pseudo-polynomials $f$ with $p|f(n)$ for some $n$ only if $p \in R$. This implies that not all pseudo-polynomials satisfy an assumption of a recent paper of Kowalski and Soundararajan. We also consider $α$-primary pseudo-polynomials, where the pseudo-polynomial condition is only required for $k$ lying in a set of primes of density $α$. We show that if an $α$-primary pseudo-polynomial …
We study the first and second mollified moments of central values of a quadratic family of Hecke $L$-functions of prime moduli to show that more than nine percent of the members of this family do not vanish at the central values.
We complement the argument of M. Z. Garaev (2009) with several other ideas to obtain a stronger version of the large sieve inequality with sparse exponential sequences of the form $λ^{s_n}$. In particular, we obtain a result which is non-trivial for monotonically increasing sequences $\cal{S}=\{s_n \}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ provided $s_n\le n^{2+o(1)}$, whereas the original argument of M. Z. Garaev requires $s_n \le n^{15/14 +o(1)}$ in the same setting. We also give an application of our result to arithmetic properties of integers with almost all digits prescribed.
We prove a version of the Bombieri--Vinogradov Theorem with certain products of Gaussian primes as moduli, making use of their special form as polynomial expressions in several variables. Adapting Vaughan's proof of the classical Bombieri--Vinogadov Theorem to this setting, we apply the polynomial large sieve inequality that has been recently proved and which includes recent progress in Vinogradov's mean value theorem due to Parsell et al. From the benefit of these improvements, we obtain an extended range for the variables compared to the range obtained from standard arguments only.
One aspect of Chebyshev's bias is the phenomenon that a prime number, $ q $, modulo another prime number, $ p$, experimentally seems to be slightly more likely to be a nonquadratic residue than a quadratic residue. We thought it would be interesting to model this residue bias as a "random" walk using Legendre symbol values as steps. Such a model would allow us to easily visualize the bias. In addition, we would be able to extend our model to other number fields. In this report, we first outline underlying theory and some motivations for our research. In the second section, we present our findi…
We derive a refined conjecture for the variance of Gaussian primes across sectors, with a power saving error term, by applying the L-functions Ratios Conjecture. We observe a bifurcation point in the main term, consistent with the Random Matrix Theory (RMT) heuristic previously proposed by Rudnick and Waxman. Our model also identifies a second bifurcation point, undetected by the RMT model, that emerges upon taking into account lower order terms. For sufficiently small sectors, we moreover prove an unconditional result that is consistent with our conjecture down to lower order terms.
We give an unconditional version of a conditional, on the Extended Riemann Hypothesis, result of L. Babai, A. Banerjee, R. Kulkarni and V. Naik (2010) on the evasiveness of sparse graphs.
In this paper, we exhibit an asymptotic formula for the number of representations of a large integer as a sum of a fixed power of Piatetski-Shapiro primes, thereby establishing a variant of Waring-Goldbach problem with primes from a sparse sequence.
Fermat showed that every prime p = 1 mod 4 is a sum of two squares: $p = a^2 + b^2$. To any of the 8 possible representations (a,b) we associate an angle whose tangent is the ratio b/a. In 1919 Hecke showed that these angles are uniformly distributed as p varies, and in the 1950's Kubilius proved uniform distribution in somewhat short arcs. We study fine scale statistics of these angles, in particular the variance of the number of such angles in a short arc. We present a conjecture for this variance, motivated both by a random matrix model, and by a function field analogue of this problem, for…
The transference principle of Green and Tao enabled various authors to transfer Szemerédi's theorem on long arithmetic progressions in dense sets to various sparse sets of integers, mostly sparse sets of primes. In this paper, we provide a transference principle which applies to general affine-linear configurations of finite complexity. We illustrate the broad applicability of our transference principle with the case of almost twin primes, by which we mean either Chen primes or "bounded gap primes", as well as with the case of primes of the form $x^2+y^2+1$. Thus, we show that in these sets of…
An interesting question, known as the Gaussian moat problem, asks whether it is possible to walk to infinity on Gaussian primes with steps of bounded length. Our work examines a similar situation in the real quadratic integer ring $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt{2}]$ whose primes cluster near the asymptotes $y = \pm x/\sqrt{2}$ as compared to Gaussian primes, which cluster near the origin. We construct a probabilistic model of primes in $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt{2}]$ by applying the prime number theorem and a combinatorial theorem for counting the number of lattice points whose absolute values of their norms are at…
We formulate Goldbach type questions for Gaussian, Hurwitz, Octavian and Eisenstein primes. They are different from Goldbach type statements by Takayoshi Mitsui from 1960 for number fields or C.A. Holben and James Jordan from 1968 for Gaussian integers. Here is what we meeasure: 1) Every even Gaussian integer a+ib satisfying a>2, b>2 is a sum of two Gaussian primes with positive coefficients. 2) Every Eisenstein integer a+bw with a>3,b>3 and w=(1+sqrt(-3))/2 is the sum of two Eisenstein primes with positive coefficients. Note that no evenness condition is asked in the Eisenstein case. 3) Every…
We establish a general large sieve inequality with sparse sets $\mathcal{S}$ of moduli in the Gaussian integers which are in a sense well-distributed in arithmetic progressions. This extends earlier work of S. Baier on the large sieve with sparse sets of moduli. We then use this result to obtain large sieve bounds for the cases when $\mathcal{S}$ consists of squares of Gaussian integers and of Gaussian primes. Our bound for the case of square moduli improves a recent result by the authors.
We experiment with some topics in elementary number theory. For matrices defined by Gaussian primes we observe a circular spectral law for the eigenvalues. We look at matrices defined by Gaussian primes and look at the growth of the determinant, trace. We experiment with various Goldbach conjectures for Gaussian primes, Eisenstein primes, Hurwitz primes or Octavian primes. These conjectures relate with Landau or Bunyakovsky or Andrica type conjectures for rational primes. We also look at some graphs finite simple defined by primes. Finally we look at some spectra of almost periodic pseudo rand…
We prove mod-Gaussian convergence for a Dirichlet polynomial which approximates $\operatorname{Im}\logζ(1/2+it)$. This Dirichlet polynomial is sufficiently long to deduce Selberg's central limit theorem with an explicit error term. Moreover, assuming the Riemann hypothesis, we apply the theory of the Riemann zeta-function to extend this mod-Gaussian convergence to the complex plane. From this we obtain that $\operatorname{Im}\logζ(1/2+it)$ satisfies a large deviation principle on the critical line. Results about the moments of the Riemann zeta-function follow.
We show that the Gaussian primes $P[i] \subseteq \Z[i]$ contain infinitely constellations of any prescribed shape and orientation. More precisely, given any distinct Gaussian integers $v_0,...,v_{k-1}$, we show that there are infinitely many sets $\{a+rv_0,...,a+rv_{k-1}\}$, with $a \in \Z[i]$ and $r \in \Z \backslash \{0\}$, all of whose elements are Gaussian primes. The proof is modeled on a recent paper by Green and Tao and requires three ingredients. The first is a hypergraph removal lemma of Gowers and Rödl-Skokan; this hypergraph removal lemma can be thought of as a generalization of the…
Suppose $q$ is a prime power and $f\in\mathbb{F}_q[x]$ is a univariate polynomial with exactly $t$ monomial terms and degree $<q-1$. To establish a finite field analogue of Descartes' Rule, Bi, Cheng, and Rojas (2013) proved an upper bound of $2(q-1)^{\frac{t-2}{t-1}}$ on the number of cosets in $\mathbb{F}^*_q$ needed to cover the roots of $f$ in $\mathbb{F}^*_q$. Here, we give explicit $f$ with root structure approaching this bound: For $q$ a $(t-1)$-st power of a prime we give an explicit $t$-nomial vanishing on $q^{\frac{t-2}{t-1}}$ distinct cosets of $\mathbb{F}^*_q$. Over prime fields $\…
