Products of primes in arithmetic progressions

DOI10.1515/CRELLE-2023-0096MaRDI QIDQ6203236zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Kaisa Matomäki, Joni Teräväinen

Publication date 27 February 2024

Published in Journal für die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.07679

zbMATH Keywords

Dirichlet characterproducts of primesreduced residue class

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Primes in congruence classes (11N13) Applications of sieve methods (11N36) Goldbach-type theorems; other additive questions involving primes (11P32)

Abstract: A conjecture of ErdH{o}s states that, for any large prime $q$, every reduced residue class $pmodq$ can be represented as a product $p_1{p}_2$ of two primes $p_1,p_{2}leqq$. We establish a ternary version of this conjecture, showing that, for any sufficiently large cube-free integer $q$, every reduced residue class $pmodq$ can be written as $p_1{p}_2{p}_3$ with $p_1,p_2,p_{3}leqq$ primes. We also show that, for any $varepsilon>0$ and any sufficiently large integer $q$, at least $(2/3-varepsilon)varphi(q)$ reduced residue classes $pmodq$ can be represented as a product $p_1{p}_2$ of two primes $p_1,p_{2}leqq$. The problems naturally reduce to studying character sums. The main innovation in the paper is the establishment of a multiplicative dense model theorem for character sums over primes in the spirit of the transference principle. In order to deal with possible local obstructions we use bounds for the logarithmic density of primes in certain unions of cosets of subgroups of $mathbb{Z}_q^{i}mes$ of small index and study in detail the exceptional case that there exists a quadratic character $psipmodq$ such that $psi(p)=-1$ for almost all primes $pleqq$.

Review text

Let \(\mathbb{Z}_q^{\times}\) be the set of reduced residue classes \(\pmod q\). For integers \(k,q\geq 1\) and a real number \(N \geq 1\), let \(E_k(N)\) be the set of integers \(a \in \mathbb{Z}_q^{\times}\) such that \(a \equiv p_1 \dotsm p_k \pmod{q}\) for some primes \(p_1, \dotsc, p_k \leq N\). The main purpose of the paper under study is to approximate the size of \(E_k(N)\) for \(k\in \{2,3\}\). The case \(k=2\) concerns with a conjecture due to Erdős stated in [\textit{P. Erdős} et al., Period. Math. Hungar. 18, 229--239 (1987; Zbl 0625.10035)] asserting that \(E_2(q)=\mathbb{Z}_q^{\times}\) for all large enough primes \(q\). This conjecture is still open, even under assuming generalized Riemann hypothesis. In this paper the authors establish a ternary variant of Erdős' conjecture by showing that if \(q \in \mathbb{N}\) is cube-free and sufficiently large, then \(E_3(q) = \mathbb{Z}_q^{\times}\). Moreover, letting \(\varepsilon>0\) and \(q \in \mathbb{N}\) be sufficiently large in terms of \(\varepsilon\), they prove that \(E_3(q^{1+\varepsilon}) = \mathbb{Z}_q^{\times}\). In another direction to consider Erdős' conjecture, the authors consider the problem of lower-bounding the density of \(E_2(q)\) inside \(\mathbb{Z}_q^{\times}\), and prove that letting \(\varepsilon>0\) and \(q \in \mathbb{N}\) be sufficiently large in terms of \(\varepsilon\), then one has \(|E_2(q)| \geq (2/3-\varepsilon) \varphi(q)\), and further, assuming \(q\) is cube-free, then \(|E_2(q)| \geq (11/16-\varepsilon) \varphi(q)\).

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