English

Squarefrees are Gaussian in short intervals

Number Theory 2024-10-15 v3 Probability

Abstract

We show that counts of squarefree integers up to XX in short intervals of size HH tend to a Gaussian distribution as long as HH\rightarrow\infty and H=Xo(1)H = X^{o(1)}. This answers a question posed by R.R. Hall in 1989. More generally we prove a variant of Donsker's theorem, showing that these counts scale to a fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter 1/41/4. In fact we are able to prove these results hold in general for collections of BB-free integers as long as the sieving set BB satisfies a very mild regularity property, for Hurst parameter varying with the set BB.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.12234,
  title  = {Squarefrees are Gaussian in short intervals},
  author = {Ofir Gorodetsky and Alexander P. Mangerel and Brad Rodgers},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.12234},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

34 pages, 6 figures. Accepted version. Minor changes (mostly typos and style)

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:28:45.654Z