A hybrid of theorems of Goldbach and Piatetski-Shapiro (Q2431999)

When \(\gamma\) is a positive real number, a prime \(p\) is called a Piatetski-Shapiro prime of type \(\gamma\), if \(p\) is the integer part of \(m^{1/\gamma}\) for some natural number \(m\). This paper is devoted to proving that almost all even natural numbers can be written as the sum of a prime and a Piatetski-Shapiro prime of type \(\gamma\), provided that \(13/15<\gamma\leq 1\). More precisely, if we write \(E_{\gamma}(N)\) for the number of even integers \(n\) with \(N<n\leq 2N\) such that \(n\) cannot be written as the aforementioned manner, then for every large real number \(N\), it is shown in this paper that one has \(E_{\gamma}(N)\ll N(\log N)^{-2}\), for each \(\gamma\) in the above range. Before this work, this kind of conclusion was known for \(8/9<\gamma\leq 1\), which is due to \textit{H. Z. Li} [Acta Arith. 107, 307--326 (2003; Zbl 1050.11083)]. (Note that \(8/9=0.\dot{8}\) and \(13/15=0.8\dot{6}\).) The proof uses the circle method together with several ideas in the sieve theory.