Almost primes in short intervals (Q5906687)

The author improves on the values of \(\theta\) for which the interval \((x- x^\theta, x)\) is known, for large enough \(x\), to contain a \(P_2\) number (having at most two prime factors). Records were set by \textit{H. Halberstam} and \textit{H.-E. Richert} [Banach Cent. Publ. 17, 183-215 (1985; Zbl 0592.10041)], who developed a bilinear form for the error term in a weighted sieve of the reviewer to obtain \(\theta= 0.4476\), and more recently by \textit{E. Fouvry} \((\theta= 0.4436)\) [Lect. Notes Math. 1434, 65-85 (1990; Zbl 0706.11053)] and by \textit{J. Wu} \((\theta= 0.44)\) [Théorie des Nombres, Sémin., Paris 1989-90, 233-267 (1992; Zbl 0743.11050)]. The author uses the same bilinear error term but obtains \(\theta= 0.4386\). The improvement comes from improved treatment of the exponential sums involved, building on results of \textit{E. Fouvry} and \textit{H. Iwaniec} [J. Number Theory 33, 311-333 (1989; Zbl 0687.10028)] and \textit{C. Jia} [Sci. China 22, 812 ff. (Chinese) (1992)].