English

A Smooth Analytical Approximation of the Prime Characteristic Function

General Mathematics 2025-05-28 v1

Abstract

We construct a smooth real-valued function P(n) in [0,1], defined via a triple integral with a periodic kernel, that approximates the characteristic function of prime numbers. The function is built to suppress when n is divisible by some m < n, and to remain close to 1 otherwise. We prove that P(n) approaches 1 for prime n and P(n) is less than 1 for composite n, under appropriate limits of the smoothing parameters. The construction is fully differentiable and admits both asymptotic and finite approximations, offering a continuous surrogate for primality that is compatible with analytical, numerical, and optimization methods. We compare our approach with classical number-theoretic techniques, explore its computational aspects, and suggest potential applications in spectral analysis, machine learning, and probabilistic models of primes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.14414,
  title  = {A Smooth Analytical Approximation of the Prime Characteristic Function},
  author = {Stanislav Semenov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.14414},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

30 pages, submitted to arXiv

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:04:26.614Z