Bounded gaps between products of special primes (Q401960)

Summary: In their breakthrough paper \textit{D. A. Goldston} et al. [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 98, No. 3, 741--774 (2009; Zbl 1213.11171); corrigendum ibid. 106, No. 2, 477--480 (2013; Zbl 1295.11101)] proved several results about bounded gaps between products of two distinct primes. \textit{F. Thorne} [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2008, Article ID rnm156, 41 p. (2008; Zbl 1246.11156)] expanded on this result, proving bounded gaps in the set of square-free numbers with \(r\) prime factors for any \(r\geq 2\), all of which are in a given set of primes. His results yield applications to the divisibility of class numbers and the triviality of ranks of elliptic curves. In this paper, we relax the condition on the number of prime factors and prove an analogous result using a modified approach. We then revisit Thorne's applications and give a better bound in each case.