English

An analytic method for bounding $\psi(x)$

Number Theory 2017-10-24 v2 Numerical Analysis

Abstract

In this paper we present an analytic altorithm which calculates almost sharp bounds for the normalized error term (tψ(t))/t(t-\psi(t))/\sqrt{t} for txt\leq x in expected run time O(x1/2+ε)O(x^{1/2+\varepsilon}) for every ε>0\varepsilon>0. The method has been implemented and used to calculate the bound ψ(t)t0.94t|\psi(t) - t| \leq 0.94 \sqrt{t} for 11<t101911< t\leq 10^{19}. In particular, this bound implies that li(t)π(t)>0\operatorname{li}(t) - \pi(t) > 0 for t[2,1019]t\in [2,10^{19}], which gives an improved lower bound for the Skewes number.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1511.02032,
  title  = {An analytic method for bounding $\psi(x)$},
  author = {Jan Büthe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.02032},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

17 pages, final version, to appear in Math. Comp

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:38:53.463Z