Predicting maximal gaps in sets of primes
Abstract
Let be coprime integers. Let be an increasing sequence of primes satisfying two conditions: (i) (mod ) and (ii) starts a prime -tuple with a given pattern . Let be the number of primes in not exceeding . We heuristically derive formulas predicting the growth trend of the maximal gap between successive primes . Extensive computations for primes up to show that a simple trend formula works well for maximal gaps between initial primes of -tuples with (e.g., twin primes, prime triplets, etc.) in residue class (mod ). For , however, a more sophisticated formula gives a better prediction of maximal gap sizes. The latter includes the important special case of maximal gaps in the sequence of all primes (, , ). The distribution of appropriately rescaled maximal gaps is close to the Gumbel extreme value distribution. Computations suggest that almost all maximal gaps satisfy a generalized strong form of Cramer's conjecture. We also conjecture that the number of maximal gaps between primes in below is .
Cite
@article{arxiv.1901.03785,
title = {Predicting maximal gaps in sets of primes},
author = {Alexei Kourbatov and Marek Wolf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.03785},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
30 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Errata (last page); URL ref.[3] updated. Sequel to arXiv:1102.0481, arXiv:1610.03340, arXiv:1709.05508