English

New Results on Primes from an Old Proof of Euler's

Number Theory 2007-05-23 v2

Abstract

In 1737 Leonard Euler gave what we often now think of as a new proof, based on infinite series, of Euclid's theorem that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Our short paper uses a simple modification of Euler's argument to obtain new results about the distribution of prime factors of sets of integers, including a weak one-sided Tschebyshev inequality. An example shows that there cannot be a prime number theorem in this situation, or even a pair of Tschebyshev inequalities, but it would be very interesting to know if a one-sided Tschebyshev inequality holds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0210282,
  title  = {New Results on Primes from an Old Proof of Euler's},
  author = {Charles W. Neville},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0210282},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

Revision 1, Plain Tex, 7 pages. Revision 1 corrects history, references and non-computability example