English

Primes in prime number races

Number Theory 2019-09-04 v2

Abstract

Rubinstein and Sarnak have shown, conditional on the Riemann hypothesis (RH) and the linear independence hypothesis (LI) on the non-real zeros of ζ(s)\zeta(s), that the set of real numbers x2x\ge2 for which π(x)>\pi(x)> li(x)(x) has a logarithmic density, which they computed to be about 2.6×1072.6\times10^{-7}. A natural problem is to examine the actual primes in this race. We prove, assuming RH and LI, that the logarithmic density of the set of primes pp for which π(p)>\pi(p)> li(p)(p) relative to the prime numbers exists and is the same as the Rubinstein-Sarnak density. We also extend such results to a broad class of prime number races, including the "Mertens race" between p<x(11/p)1\prod_{p< x}(1-1/p)^{-1} and eγlogxe^{\gamma}\log x and the "Zhang race" between px1/(plogp)\sum_{p\ge x}1/(p\log p) and 1/logx1/\log x. These latter results resolve a question of the first and third author from a previous paper, leading to further progress on a 1988 conjecture of Erd\H{o}s on primitive sets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.03033,
  title  = {Primes in prime number races},
  author = {Jared Duker Lichtman and Greg Martin and Carl Pomerance},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.03033},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

14 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:59:31.741Z