Related papers: Numbers with at most $2$ prime factors in short ar…
We show that as soon as $h\to \infty$ with $X \to \infty$, almost all intervals $(x-h\log X, x]$ with $x \in (X/2, X]$ contain a product of at most two primes. In the proof we use Richert's weighted sieve, with the arithmetic information…
Let $\mathcal{P}_r$ denote an almost-prime with at most $r$ prime factors, counted according to multiplicity. Suppose that $a$ and $q$ are positive integers satisfying $(a,q)=1$. Denote by $\mathcal{P}_2(a,q)$ the least almost-prime…
We prove an asymptotic formula for the number of integers $\leq x$ which can be written as the product of $k ~(\geq 2)$ distinct primes $p_1\cdots p_k$ with each prime factor in an arithmetic progression $p_j\equiv a_j \bmod q$, $(a_j,…
We prove that, if $x$ and $q\leqslant x^{1/16}$ are two parameters, then for any invertible residue class $a$ modulo $q$ there exists a product of exactly three primes, each one below $x^{1/3}$, that is congruent to $a$ modulo $q$.
Let $x,h$ and $Q$ be three parameters. We show that, for most moduli $q\le Q$ and for most positive real numbers $y\le x$, every reduced arithmetic progression $a\mod q$ has approximately the expected number of primes $p$ from the interval…
For any $\epsilon>0$, there exists $q_0(\epsilon)$ such for any $q\ge q_0(\epsilon)$ and any invertible residue class $a$ modulo $q$, there exists a natural number that is congruent to $a$ modulo $q$ and that is the product of exactly three…
We show that, for almost all $x$, the interval $(x, x+(\log x)^{2.1}]$ contains products of exactly two primes. This improves on a work of the second author that had $3.51$ in place of $2.1$. To obtain this improvement, we prove a new type…
We prove that a positive proportion of the intervals of any fixed scalar multiple of $\log(X)$ in the dyadic interval $[X,2X]$ contain a prime number. We also show that a positive proportion of the congruence classes modulo $q$ contain a…
We derive explicit upper bounds for various functions counting primes in arithmetic progressions. By way of example, if $q$ and $a$ are integers with $\gcd(a,q)=1$ and $3 \leq q \leq 10^5$, and $\theta(x;q,a)$ denotes the sum of the…
Let $q_n$ denote the $n^{th}$ number that is a product of exactly two distinct primes. We prove that $$\liminf_{n\to \infty} (q_{n+1}-q_n) \le 6.$$ This sharpens an earlier result of the authors (arXivMath NT/0506067), which had 26 in place…
We investigate the first moment of primes in progressions $$ \sum_{\substack{q\leq x/N \\ (q,a)=1}} \Big(\psi(x; q, a) - \frac x{\varphi(q)}\Big) $$ as $x, N \to \infty$. We show unconditionally that, when $a=1$, there is a significant bias…
Let $\chi$ be a real non-principal character modulo a prime $q$ and $L(s,\chi)$ be the corresponding $L$-function. We prove that for any real number $s\geq 1$ there holds $$ -\frac{L'(s,\chi )}{L(s,\chi)}\leq c \log q,$$ where $c$ can be…
The Brun-Titchmarsh theorem shows that the number of primes $\le x$ which are congruent to $a\pmod{q}$ is $\le (C+o(1))x/(\phi(q)\log{x})$ for some value $C$ depending on $\log{x}/\log{q}$. Different authors have provided different…
We show that the existence of arithmetic progressions with few primes, with a quantitative bound on "few", implies the existence of larger gaps between primes less than x than is currently known unconditionally. In particular, we derive…
In this paper we show that for some constant $c>0$ and for any $A>0$ there exist some $x(A)>0$ such that, If $q\leq (\log x)^{A}$ then we have \begin{align} \Psi_z(x;\mathcal{N}_q(a,b),q) &= \frac{\Theta (z)}{2\phi(q)}x +…
We prove that analogues of the Hardy-Littlewood generalised twin prime conjecture for almost primes hold on average. Our main theorem establishes an asymptotic formula for the number of integers $n=p_1p_2 \leq X$ such that $n+h$ is a…
Let $m \in \mathbb{N}$ be large. We show that there exist infinitely many primes $q_{1}< \cdot\cdot\cdot < q_{m+1}$ such that \[ q_{m+1}-q_{1}=O(e^{7.63m}) \] and $q_{j}+2$ has at most \[ \frac{7.36m}{\log 2} + \frac{4\log m}{\log 2} + 21…
Let $E_k$ be the set of positive integers having exactly $k$ prime factors. We show that almost all intervals $[x,x+\log^{1+\varepsilon} x]$ contain $E_3$ numbers, and almost all intervals $[x,x+\log^{3.51} x]$ contain $E_2$ numbers. By…
Under two assumptions, we determine the distribution of the difference between two functions each counting the numbers < x that are in a given arithmetic progression modulo q and the product of two primes. The two assumptions are (i) the…
Assuming a uniform $q$-variant of the prime $k$-tuple conjecture, we compute moments of the number of primes in arithmetic progressions to a large modulus $q$ as the residue classes vary. Consequently, depending on the size of $\varphi(q)$,…