English

Symmetric primes revisited

Number Theory 2019-08-27 v2

Abstract

A pair of odd primes is said to be symmetric if each prime is congruent to one modulo their difference. A theorem from 1996 by Fletcher, Lindgren, and the third author provides an upper bound on the number of primes up to x that belong to a symmetric pair. In the present paper, that theorem is improved to what is likely to be the best possible result. We also establish that there exist infinitely many symmetric pairs of primes. In fact, we show that for every integer m at least 2 there is a string of m consecutive primes, any two of which form a symmetric pair.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.06161,
  title  = {Symmetric primes revisited},
  author = {William Banks and Paul Pollack and Carl Pomerance},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.06161},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

6 pages. This replaces the version dated 16 Aug., 2019

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:49:31.514Z