English

Long gaps between primes

Number Theory 2019-10-22 v3 Combinatorics

Abstract

Let pnp_n denotes the nn-th prime. We prove that maxpn+1X(pn+1pn)logXloglogXloglogloglogXlogloglogX\max_{p_{n+1} \leq X} (p_{n+1}-p_n) \gg \frac{\log X \log \log X\log\log\log\log X}{\log \log \log X} for sufficiently large XX, improving upon recent bounds of the first three and fifth authors and of the fourth author. Our main new ingredient is a generalization of a hypergraph covering theorem of Pippenger and Spencer, proven using the R\"odl nibble method.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1412.5029,
  title  = {Long gaps between primes},
  author = {Kevin Ford and Ben Green and Sergei Konyagin and James Maynard and Terence Tao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.5029},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

(i) in the introduction, we added a corollary about the least prime in an arithmetic progression; (ii) relaxed the hypotheses of Cor. 4: now sets P' and Q' may be arbitrary sets, not necessarily sets of primes; this has an application (arXiv:1607.02543); (iii) updated many references

R2 v1 2026-06-22T07:33:30.160Z