Inequities in the Shanks-Rényi prime number race: an asymptotic formula for the densities

DOI10.1515/CRELLE.2012.004MaRDI QIDQ4914033zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Daniel Fiorilli, Greg Martin

Publication date 17 April 2013

Published in Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik (Crelles Journal) (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4908

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Primes in congruence classes (11N13) Distribution of integers in special residue classes (11N69)

Abstract: Chebyshev was the first to observe a bias in the distribution of primes in residue classes. The general phenomenon is that if $a$ is a nonsquaremod q and $b$ is a squaremod q, then there tend to be more primes congruent to $amodq$ than $bmodq$ in initial intervals of the positive integers; more succinctly, there is a tendency for $pi(x;q,a)$ to exceed $pi(x;q,b)$. Rubinstein and Sarnak defined $delta(q;a,b)$ to be the logarithmic density of the set of positive real numbers $x$ for which this inequality holds; intuitively, $delta(q;a,b)$ is the "probability" that $pi(x;q,a)>pi(x;q,b)$ when $x$ is "chosen randomly". In this paper, we establish an asymptotic series for $delta(q;a,b)$ that can be instantiated with an error term smaller than any negative power of $q$. This asymptotic formula is written in terms of a variance $V(q;a,b)$ that is originally defined as an infinite sum over all nontrivial zeros of Dirichlet $L$-functions corresponding to charactersmod q; we show how $V(q;a,b)$ can be evaluated exactly as a finite expression. In addition to providing the exact rate at which $delta(q;a,b)$ converges to $frac12$ as $q$ grows, these evaluations allow us to compare the various density values $delta(q;a,b)$ as $a$ and $b$ vary modulo $q$; by analyzing the resulting formulas, we can explain and predict which of these densities will be larger or smaller, based on arithmetic properties of the residue classes $a$ and $bmodq$. For example, we show that if $a$ is a prime power and $a^{\prime }$ is not, then $delta(q;a,1)<delta(q;a^{\prime },1)$ for all but finitely many moduli $q$ for which both $a$ and $a^{\prime }$ are nonsquares. Finally, we establish rigorous numerical bounds for these densities $delta(q;a,b)$ and report on extensive calculations of them.

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Cited in

(24)

• Chebyshev's bias in dihedral and generalized quaternion Galois groups
• Chebyshev's bias for products of irreducible polynomials
• The sign changes of Fourier coefficients of Eisenstein series
• Prime number races with three or more competitors
• The Shanks-Rényi prime number race with many contestants
• A lower bound for biases amongst products of two primes
• Orderings of weakly correlated random variables, and prime number races with many contestants
• Extreme biases in prime number races with many contestants
• Chebyshev's bias for products of \(k\) primes
• Biases in the Shanks—Rényi Prime Number Race
• Chebyshev's Bias for Products of Two Primes
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5119304 (Why is no real title available?)
• Chebyshev's bias for analytic L-functions
• Inclusive prime number races
• Densities in certain three-way prime number races
• Primes in prime number races
• A zero density estimate and fractional imaginary parts of zeros for L-functions
• Zeros of Dirichlet \(L\)-functions near the real axis and Chebyshev's bias
• Moments of moments of primes in arithmetic progressions
• Disproving Hooley's conjecture
• Inequities in the Shanks–Renyi prime number race over function fields
• Exceptional biases in counting primes over function fields
• An annotated bibliography for comparative prime number theory
• Moments in the Chebotarev density theorem: general class functions

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