Skip to main content
2 of 2
deleted 18 characters in body
Dominic van der Zypen
  • 56.5k
  • 10
  • 57
  • 213

Primes in arithmetic progressions in moving intervals

Starting point. Let $P\subseteq\mathbb{N}$ be the set of primes. Looking at $P$ and seeing how $P$ thins out as we progress to higher numbers is enough to make the following statement plausible:

For all integers $n,k \geq 2$ we have $$\Big|[2, 2+n]\cap P\Big| \geq \Big|[k, k+n]\cap P\Big|.$$

Interestingly, it is not known whether this statement is true, and the consensus seems to be that the statement is likely false. This inspired the following considerations.

Taking this to finite arithmetical progressions. For $a, n\in\mathbb{N}$, let $A^{\leq n}_a=\{j\cdot a: j\in\mathbb{N}, 0\leq j\leq n\}$. If $n\in \mathbb{N}$ and $B\subseteq \mathbb{N}$, let $n+B:= \{n+b: b\in B\}$. Is there a counterexample for the following statement?

For all integers $a, k, n \geq 2$ with $a$ odd we have $$\Big|[2+A^{\leq n}_a\cap P\Big| \geq \Big|[k+A^{\leq n}_a\cap P\Big|.$$

Dominic van der Zypen
  • 56.5k
  • 10
  • 57
  • 213