Related papers: Small gaps between almost-twin primes
We combine transcendental methods and the modular approaches to the $ABC$ conjecture to show that the largest prime factor of $n^2+1$ is at least of size $(\log_2 n)^2/\log_3n$ where $\log_k$ is the $k$-th iterate of the logarithm. This…
Fix a modulus $q$. One would expect the number of primes in each invertible residue class mod $q$ to be multinomially distributed, i.e. for each $p \,\mathrm{mod}\, q$ to behave like an independent random variable uniform on…
Suppose that $n$ is $0$ or $4$ modulo $6$. We show that there are infinitely many primes of the form $p^2 + nq^2$ with both $p$ and $q$ prime, and obtain an asymptotic for their number. In particular, when $n = 4$ we verify the `Gaussian…
For $j=1,2$, let $f_j(z) = \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} a_{j}(n) e^{2\pi i nz}$ be a holomorphic, non-CM cuspidal newform of even weight $k_j \ge 2$ with trivial nebentypus. For each prime $p$, let $\theta_{j}(p)\in[0,\pi]$ be the angle such that…
This is an expository article to accompany my two lectures at the CDM conference. I have used this an excuse to make public two sets of notes I had lying around, and also to put together a short reader's guide to some recent joint work with…
For each of the functions $f \in \{\phi, \sigma, \omega, \tau\}$ and every natural number $k$, we show that there are infinitely many solutions to the inequalities $f(p_n-1) < f(p_{n+1}-1) < \dots < f(p_{n+k}-1)$, and similarly for…
We develop a sieve that can detect primes in multiplicatively structured sets under certain conditions. We apply it to obtain a new $L$-function free proof of Linnik's problem of bounding the least prime $p$ such that $p\equiv a\pmod q$…
Let $n$ be a positive integer and $f(x) := x^{2^n}+1$. In this paper, we study orders of primes dividing products of the form $P_{m,n}:=f(1)f(2)\cdots f(m)$. We prove that if $m > \max\{10^{12},4^{n+1}\}$, then there exists a prime divisor…
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 the primes of the form $x^2+y^2+1$ contain arbitrarily long non-trivial arithmetic progressions.
Let $k\geq 2$ be a fixed natural number. We establish the existence of infinitely many pairs of consecutive primes $p_n$, $p_{n+1}$ satisfying $$ p_{n+1}-p_n\geq c\:\frac{\log p_n\: \log_2 p_n\: \log_4 p_n}{\log_3 p_n}\:,$$ with $c$ being a…
We show that if $\frac{L}{\varphi(q)\log X}\to\infty$ as $X\to\infty$, almost all $(a, x)\in (\mathbb Z/q\mathbb Z)^\times\times [X, 2X]$ are such that there exists a product of at most two primes in $[x, x + L]$ congruent to $a\mod{q}$.
Prime numbers are one of the most intriguing figures in mathematics. Despite centuries of research, many questions remain still unsolved. In recent years, computer simulations are playing a fundamental role in the study of an immense…
We consider several old problems involving the number of prime divisors function $\omega(n)$, as well as the related functions $\Omega(n)$ and $\tau(n)$. Firstly, we show that there are infinitely many positive integers $n$ such that…
This note presents a result on the maximal prime gap of the form p_(n+1) - p_n <= C(log p_n)^(1+e), where C > 0 is a constant, for any arbitrarily small real number e > 0, and all sufficiently large integer n > n_0. Equivalently, the result…
In his Classical approximation to the Twin prime problem, Selberg proved that for $x$ sufficiently large, there is an $n \in (x,2x)$ such that $2^{\Omega(n)}+2^{\Omega(n+2)} \leq \lambda$ with $\lambda=14$, where $\Omega(n)$ is the number…
For any fixed $k\geq 2$, we prove that every sufficiently large integer can be expressed as the sum of a $k$th power of a prime and a number with at most $M(k)=6k$ prime factors. For sufficiently large $k$ we also show that one can take…
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…
Let $q>r\ge1$ be coprime integers. Let $R(n,q,r)$ be the $n$th record gap between primes in the arithmetic progression $r$, $r+q$, $r+2q,\ldots,$ and denote by $N_{q,r}(x)$ the number of such records observed below $x$. For $x\to\infty$, we…
We study the gaps between products of two primes in imaginary quadratic number fields using a combination of the methods of Goldston-Graham-Pintz-Yildirim \cite{GGPY}, and Maynard \cite{MAY}. An important consequence of our main theorem is…