On the A-dependence of the linear sieve with application to polynomial sequences (Q1082368)

This paper is concerned with error terms in the linear sieve. In the notation of \textit{H. Halberstam} and \textit{H.-E. Richert}'s book ''Sieve Methods'' (1974; Zbl 0298.10026), the linear sieve gives the bounds \[ S(A,P,z)\leq XV(z) \{F(u)+H\}+\sum_{d<y,\;d | P(z)}| R_ d|, \] \[ S(A,P,z)\geq XV(z) \{f(u)-H\}+\sum_{d<y,\;d | P(z)}| R_ d|. \] Here, \(H\) is an error term which depends on the constant \(A_ 2\) in the hypothesis \[ V(v)/V(w)\leq (\log v/\log w)(1+A_ 2/\log v),\;2\leq v\leq w. \] (This is hypothesis \(\Omega_ 2(1,A_ 2)\) of ''Sieve methods''.) Halberstam and Richert proved the estimate \(H\ll_{A_ 2} (\log X)^{-1/14}.\) \textit{H. Iwaniec} [Acta Arith. 36, 171--202 (1980; Zbl 0435.10029)] was the first to give an estimate for \(H\) with the dependence on \(A_ 2\) made explicit; he proved that \[ H=(\log y)^{-1/3}\;\exp (A_ 2^{1/2}-u \log u+u \log \log 3u+O(u)). \] Richert (unpublished) improved this to \(H\ll A_ 2^ 8 e^{-u}(\log z)^{-1/3}\). In this paper, the author replaces \(\Omega_ 2(1,A_ 2)\) with \((\Omega_ a)\): There exists a constant \(A\geq 2\) such that \[ V(v)/V(w)\leq (\log v/\log w)(1+A/\log v)\quad\text{if}\;a\leq v<w. \] With this assumption, he proves that \[ H \ll_ a V^{-1} A^{4+\alpha} (\log A)^{2+\alpha} (\log z)^{-\alpha}\quad \text{for}\;0<\alpha \leq 1/3. \] As an application, the author gives upper bounds on the number of primes in polynomial sequences. Unlike previous bounds of this sort, his bounds are uniform in the discriminant of the corresponding polynomial.