English

Towards Proving Legendre's Conjecture

Number Theory 2009-01-11 v2

Abstract

Legendre's conjecture states that there is a prime number between n^2 and (n+1)^2 for every positive integer n. We consider the following question : for all integer n>1 and a fixed integer k<=n does there exist a prime number such that kn < p < (k+1)n ? Bertrand-Chebyshev theorem answers this question affirmatively for k=1. A positive answer for k=n would prove Legendre's conjecture. In this paper, we show that one can determine explicitly a number N(k) such that for all n >= N(k), there is at least one prime between kn and (k+1)n. Our proof is based on Erdos's proof of Bertrand-Chebyshev theorem and uses elementary combinatorial techniques without appealing to the prime number theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0811.4451,
  title  = {Towards Proving Legendre's Conjecture},
  author = {Shiva Kintali},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.4451},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:45:49.056Z