Exponential sums over primes in short intervals and an application to the Waring--Goldbach problem

Let $\Lambda(n)$ be the von Mangoldt function, $x$ real and $2\leq y \leq x$. This paper improves the estimate on the exponential sum over primes in short intervals $$S_k(x,y;\alpha) = \sum_{x< n \leq x+y} \Lambda(n) e\left( n^k \alpha \right)$$ when $k\geq 3$ for $\alpha$ in the minor arcs. And then combined with the Hardy--Littlewood circle method, this enables us to investigate the Waring--Goldbach problem of representing a positive integer $n$ as the sum of $s$ $k$th powers of almost equal prime numbers, which improves the results in Wei and Wooley [12].