Recall from Lecture 1:
Remark.  
Can show 
Proof.
(the second inequality cn be proved by induction, using
Let 
We have 
Now,
Combine with 
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Divide by 
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Writing 
By part (i),
Take 
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to get
Write 
Taking exponentials,
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General tools for estimating the number of primes (or products of a few primes in a set).
Need information on the distribution of the set in residue classes.
Problem: Estimate 
Note that if 
Sieve hypothesis: There exists a multiplicative 
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for all square-free 
Example.
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Then 
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(by Chinese Remainder Theorem).
Here,
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and 
Lemma. We have
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Proof. Recall that
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(since 
Example. Let
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Let 
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By the previous lemma,
For 
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Theorem (Sieve of Erastothenes – Legendre). Assuming that:
Proof. Recall from previous lecture that
We estimate the first error term using Cauchy-Schwarz:
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Note that if 
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(
Hence, 
Now we get
(the last step is by Dirichlet’s divisor problem: 
Substituting this in, the first error term becomes as desired.
Now we estimate the second error term. We have
Combining the error terms, the claim follows. □
Example.  
Take 
By Merten’s Theorem,
Hence,
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Hence, for 
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This asymptotic in fact holds for 
In particular, the Erastothenes-Legendre sieve gives
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for 
| asymptotes | good upper bound for primes | |
| Erastothenes-Legendre | ✓ | ✗ | 
| Selberg | ✗ | ✓ | 
Sieve hypothesis: There is a multiplicative 
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for all square-free 
Proof. 
Let 
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Then,
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(If 
Summing over 
(
We first estimate 
We have
Therefore
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Now it suffices to prove that there is a choice of 
Claim 1: 
Claim 2: 
Proof of claim 1:
We have, writing 
We have
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(since 
(multiplicativity, 
Now we get
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where
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Want to minimise this subject to (
We need to translate the condition 
Hence,
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Now,
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By Cauchy-Schwarz, we then get
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Hence
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Equality holds for 
Note that
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Hence, 
This proves Claim 1.
Now we prove Claim 2 (
Note that any 
Now,
Now,
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Substituting the lower bound for 
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since 
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where 
Proof. 
Note that for any 
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Then
By Rankin’s trick,
Choose 
Remark. We expect
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in a wide range of 
Proof. 
Apply the Selberg sieve with 
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Hence, the sieve hypothesis holds with 
Now, the function 
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where 
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(since 
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By Problem 11 on Example Sheet 1, the error term is 
Take 
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(for 
since any 
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where 
We have proved
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for 
Putting everything together gives us
for