On the sum of distinct primes or squares of primes (Q456618)

The authors studied an old problem of Paul Erdős. Let \(f_{2}(s)\) denote the smallest integer such that every \(l > f_{2}(s)\) is the sum of \(s\) distinct primes or squares of primes where a prime and its square are not both used, and let \(p_{i}\) denote the \(i\)-th positive prime. The authors proved that for all sufficiently large \(s\), \(f_{2}(s) \leq p_{1} + \dots{} + p_{s+1} + 3106\), and the set of \(s\) with the equality has density 1. The proof uses elementary tools.