English

Chebyshev's bias for products of $k$ primes

Number Theory 2018-05-23 v3

Abstract

For any k1k\geq 1, we study the distribution of the difference between the number of integers nxn\leq x with ω(n)=k\omega(n)=k or Ω(n)=k\Omega(n)=k in two different arithmetic progressions, where ω(n)\omega(n) is the number of distinct prime factors of nn and Ω(n)\Omega(n) is the number of prime factors of nn counted with multiplicity . Under some reasonable assumptions, we show that, if kk is odd, the integers with Ω(n)=k\Omega(n)=k have preference for quadratic non-residue classes; and if kk is even, such integers have preference for quadratic residue classes. This result confirms a conjecture of Richard Hudson. However, the integers with ω(n)=k\omega(n)=k always have preference for quadratic residue classes. Moreover, as kk increases, the biases become smaller and smaller for both of the two cases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.04877,
  title  = {Chebyshev's bias for products of $k$ primes},
  author = {Xianchang Meng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.04877},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

35 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables