English

The primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions

Number Theory 2007-09-23 v6 Dynamical Systems

Abstract

We prove that there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of primes. There are three major ingredients. The first is Szemeredi's theorem, which asserts that any subset of the integers of positive density contains progressions of arbitrary length. The second, which is the main new ingredient of this paper, is a certain transference principle. This allows us to deduce from Szemeredi's theorem that any subset of a sufficiently pseudorandom set of positive relative density contains progressions of arbitrary length. The third ingredient is a recent result of Goldston and Yildirim. Using this, one may place the primes inside a pseudorandom set of ``almost primes'' with positive relative density.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0404188,
  title  = {The primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions},
  author = {Ben Green and Terence Tao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0404188},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

56 pages. Further minor corrections