Variants on Andrica's conjecture with and without the Riemann hypothesis (Q2337249)

Summary: The gap between what we can explicitly prove regarding the distribution of primes and what we suspect regarding the distribution of primes is enormous. It is (reasonably) well-known that the Riemann hypothesis is not sufficient to prove Andrica's conjecture: \(\forall n \geq 1\), is \(\sqrt{p_{n + 1}} - \sqrt{p_n} \leq 1\)? However, can one at least get tolerably close? I shall first show that with a logarithmic modification, provided one assumes the Riemann hypothesis, one has \[ \sqrt{p_{n+1}} / \ln p_{n+1}-\sqrt{p_n} / \ln p_n <11/25;\quad (n\geq 1). \] Then, by considering more general \(m^{th}\) roots, again assuming the Riemann hypothesis, I show that \[ \sqrt[m]{p_{n+1}}-\sqrt[m]{p_n}<44 /(25e [m-2]);\quad (n \geq 3; m > 2). \] In counterpoint, if we limit ourselves to what we can currently prove unconditionally, then the only explicit Andrica-like results seem to be variants on the relatively weak results below: \[ \ln^2 p_{n+1}-\ln^2 p_n<9;\quad \ln^3 p_{n+1}-\ln^3 p_n <52;\quad\ln^4 p_{n+1}-\ln^4 p_n < 991;\quad (n \geq 1). \] I shall also update the region on which Andrica's conjecture is unconditionally verified.