Duality Between Prime Factors and The Prime Number Theorem For Arithmetic Progressions -- Higher Order Dualities
Abstract
In 1977, the first author observed a duality between the largest and smallest prime factors of integers, and established as a consequence some new results on the M\"obius function using the Prime Number Theorem for Arithmetic Progressions. In that 1977 paper, higher order dualities were observed involving the -th largest and -th smallest prime factors, facilitated by the M\"obius function and , where is the number of distinct prime factors on . In 2024, the first author and Jason Johnson proved new results involving and , by exploiting the second order duality identity of Alladi (1977). We establish here extensions to all higher orders , the results of Alladi (1977) and of Alladi-Johnson (2024), by utilizing the -th order duality in Alladi's 1977 paper. First, we show that for each , where is the M\"obius Function and counts the number of distinct prime factors of . Further, using the General Duality Identity and the Prime Number Theorem of Arithmetic Progressions, we prove that for integers satisfying and for every ; this result for is due to Alladi (1977) and for due to Alladi-Johnson (2024). We also recast this result in the following manner as a density-type theorem: for integers satisfying and for every . All results are established here in quantitative form.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.17832,
title = {Duality Between Prime Factors and The Prime Number Theorem For Arithmetic Progressions -- Higher Order Dualities},
author = {Krishnaswami Alladi and Sroyon Sengupta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.17832},
year = {2026}
}