Linear equations in primes

Abstract: Consider a system Psi of non-constant affine-linear forms psi_1,...,psi_t: Z^d -> Z, no two of which are linearly dependent. Let N be a large integer, and let K be a convex subset of [-N,N]^d. A famous and difficult open conjecture of Hardy and Littlewood predicts an asymptotic, as N -> infty, for the number of integer points n in K for which the integers psi_1(n),...,psi_t(n) are simultaneously prime. This implies many other well-known conjectures, such as the Hardy-Littlewood prime tuples conjecture, the twin prime conjecture, and the (weak) Goldbach conjecture.

In this paper we (conditionally) verify this asymptotic under the assumption that no two of the affine-linear forms psi_1,...,psi_t are affinely related; this excludes the important ``binary cases such as the twin prime or Goldbach conjectures, but does allow one to count ``non-degenerate configurations such as arithmetic progressions. Our result assumes two families of conjectures, which we term the Inverse Gowers-norm conjecture GI(s) and the Mobius and Nilsequences Conjecture MN(s), where s in {1,2,...} is the complexity of the system and measures the extent to which the forms psi_i depend on each other. For s = 1 these are essentially classical, and the authors recently resolved the cases s = 2.

Our results are therefore unconditional in the case s = 2, and in particular we can obtain the expected asymptotics for the number of 4-term progressions p_1 < p_2 < p_3 < p_4 <= N of primes, and more generally for any (non-degenerate) problem involving two linear equations in four prime unknowns.

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