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Transcendency of variants of Mills' constant

Number Theory 2025-12-09 v3

Abstract

Let x\lfloor x\rfloor denote the integer part of xx. For every sequence (Ck)k1(C_k)_{k\ge 1} of positive integers, we define ξ(Ck)\xi(C_k) as the smallest real number ξ>1\xi>1 such that ξCk\lfloor \xi^{C_k} \rfloor is a prime number for every positive integer kk. The number ξ(3k)\xi(3^k) is called Mills' constant. Recently, the author showed that ξ(3k)\xi(3^k) is irrational; however, the transcendency remains open. In this paper, we show that Mills' constant is transcendental under the Density Hypothesis of the Riemann zeta function. Furthermore, we obtain four classes of sequences (Ck)k1(C_k)_{k\ge 1} for which we can verify the arithmetic properties of ξ(Ck)\xi(C_k). For simplicity, we give four representative examples belonging to each class: (A) ξ(bk)\xi(\lfloor b^k\rfloor) is irrational for every real number b1+2b\ge 1+\sqrt{2}; (B) ξ((1+2)k+(12)k)\xi((1+\sqrt{2})^k+(1-\sqrt{2})^k) is transcendental; (C) ξ(r3k1)\xi(r3^k-1) is transcendental for every integer r4.003×1014r\ge 4.003\times 10^{14}; (D) ξ(3k(logk)1/22(logk)1/2)\xi(3^{k-\lfloor (\log k)^{1/2} \rfloor}2^{\lfloor (\log k)^{1/2}\rfloor}) is transcendental.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.16068,
  title  = {Transcendency of variants of Mills' constant},
  author = {Kota Saito},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.16068},
  year   = {2025}
}

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30 pages