English

Correlations of error terms for weighted prime counting functions

Number Theory 2026-05-07 v2

Abstract

Standard prime-number counting functions, such as ψ(x)\psi(x), θ(x)\theta(x), and π(x)\pi(x), have error terms with limiting logarithmic distributions once suitably normalized. The same is true of weighted versions of those sums, like πr(x)=px1p\pi_r(x) = \sum_{p\le x} \frac1p and π(x)=pxlog(11p)1\pi_\ell(x) = \sum_{p\le x} \log(1-\frac1p)^{-1}, that were studied by Mertens. These limiting distributions are all identical, but passing to the limit loses information about how these error terms are correlated with one another. In this paper, we examine these correlations, showing, for example, that persistent inequalities between certain pairs of normalized error terms are equivalent to the Riemann hypothesis (RH). Assuming both RH and LI, the linear independence of the positive imaginary parts of the zeros of ζ(s)\zeta(s), we calculate the logarithmic densities of the set of real numbers for which two different error terms have prescribed signs. For example, we conditionally show that ψ(x)x\psi(x) - x and nxΛ(n)n(logxC0)\sum_{n\le x} \frac{\Lambda(n)}n - (\log x - C_0) have the same sign on a set of logarithmic density 0.9865\approx 0.9865.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.13504,
  title  = {Correlations of error terms for weighted prime counting functions},
  author = {Shubhrajit Bhattacharya and Greg Martin and Reginald M. Simpson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.13504},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Final version, to appear in Acta Arithmetica; 69 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:06:57.152Z