Variants of the Selberg sieve, and bounded intervals containing many primes

DOI10.1186/S40687-014-0012-7zbMATH Open1365.11110arXiv1407.4897OpenAlexW2060291661WikidataQ21146448 ScholiaQ21146448MaRDI QIDQ289940FDOQ289940

Authors: D. H. J. Polymath

Publication date: 31 May 2016

Published in: Research in the Mathematical Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: For any

m g e q 1

, let

H_{m}

denote the quantity

l i m i n f_{n o i n f t y} (p_{n + m} - p_{n})

. A celebrated recent result of Zhang showed the finiteness of

H_{1}

, with the explicit bound

H_{1} l e q 70000000

. This was then improved by us (the Polymath8 project) to

H_{1} l e q 4680

, and then by Maynard to

H_{1} l e q 600

, who also established for the first time a finiteness result for

H_{m}

for

m g e q 2

, and specifically that

H_{m} l l m^{3} e^{4 m}

. If one also assumes the Elliott-Halberstam conjecture, Maynard obtained the bound

H_{1} l e q 12

, improving upon the previous bound

H_{1} l e q 16

of Goldston, Pintz, and Y{i}ld{i}r{i}m, as well as the bound

H_{m} l l m^{3} e^{2 m}

. In this paper, we extend the methods of Maynard by generalizing the Selberg sieve further, and by performing more extensive numerical calculations. As a consequence, we can obtain the bound

H_{1} l e q 246

unconditionally, and

H_{1} l e q 6

under the assumption of the generalized Elliott-Halberstam conjecture. Indeed, under the latter conjecture we show the stronger statement that for any admissible triple

(h_{1}, h_{2}, h_{3})

, there are infinitely many

n

for which at least two of

n + h_{1}, n + h_{2}, n + h_{3}

are prime. We modify the "parity problem" argument of Selberg to show that this result is the best possible that one can obtain from purely sieve-theoretic considerations. For larger