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