Questions tagged [analytic-number-theory]
On the blending of real/complex analysis with number theory. The study involves distribution of prime numbers and other problems and helps giving asymptotic estimates to these.
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Consequences of the Riemann hypothesis
I assume a number of results have been proven conditionally on the Riemann hypothesis, of course in number theory and maybe in other fields. What are the most relevant you know?
It would also be nice ...
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Consequences resulting from Yitang Zhang's latest claimed results on Landau-Siegel zeros
Very recently, Yitang Zhang just gave a (virtual) talk about his work on Landau-Siegel zeros at Shandong University on the 5th of November's morning in China. He will also give a talk on 8th November ...
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Why does the Riemann zeta function have non-trivial zeros?
This is a very basic question of course, and exposes my serious ignorance of analytic number theory, but what I am looking for is a good intuitive explanation rather than a formal proof (though a ...
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Does Zhang's theorem generalize to $3$ or more primes in an interval of fixed length?
Let $p_n$ be the $n$-th prime number, as usual:
$p_1 = 2$, $p_2 = 3$, $p_3 = 5$, $p_4 = 7$, etc.
For $k=1,2,3,\ldots$, define
$$
g_k = \liminf_{n \rightarrow \infty} (p_{n+k} - p_n).
$$
Thus the twin ...
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Why does the Gamma-function complete the Riemann Zeta function?
Defining $$\xi(s) := \pi^{-s/2}\ \Gamma\left(\frac{s}{2}\right)\ \zeta(s)$$ yields $\xi(s) = \xi(1 - s)$ (where $\zeta$ is the Riemann Zeta function).
Is there any conceptual explanation - or ...
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What is the status of the Gauss Circle Problem?
For $r > 0$, let $L(r) = \# \{ (x,y) \in \mathbb{Z}^2 \ | \ x^2 + y^2 \leq r^2\}$ be the number of lattice points lying on or inside the standard circle of radius $r$. It is easy to see that $L(r) ...
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Is a "non-analytic" proof of Dirichlet's theorem on primes known or possible?
It is well-known that one can prove certain special cases of Dirichlet's theorem by exhibiting an integer polynomial $p(x)$ with the properties that the prime divisors of $\{ p(n) | n \in \mathbb{Z} \}...
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Yitang Zhang's 2007 preprint on Landau–Siegel zeros
The recent sensational news on bounded gaps between primes made me wonder: what is the status of Yitang Zhang's earlier arXiv preprint On the Landau-Siegel zeros conjecture? If this result is correct, ...
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Shortest/Most elegant proof for $L(1,\chi)\neq 0$
Let $\chi$ be a Dirichlet character and $L(1,\chi)$ the associated L-function evaluated at $s=1$. What would be the 'shortest' proof of the non-vanishing of $L(1,\chi)$?
Background: The non-vanishing ...
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Is the Green-Tao theorem true for primes within a given arithmetic progression?
Ben Green and Terrence Tao proved that there are arbitrary length arithmetic progressions among the primes.
Now, consider an arithmetic progression with starting term $a$ and common difference $d$. ...
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How does one use the Poisson summation formula?
While reading the answer to another Mathoverflow question, which mentioned the Poisson summation formula, I felt a question of my own coming on. This is something I've wanted to know for a long time. ...
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Number of elements in the set $\{1,\cdots,n\}\cdot\{1,\cdots,n\}$
Let $A_n=\{a\cdot b : a,b \in \mathbb{N}, a,b\leq n\}$. Are there any estimates for $|A_n|$? Will it be $o(n^2)$?
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Every prime number > 19 divides one plus the product of two smaller primes?
This is a part of my answer to this question I think it deserves to be treated separately.
Conjecture Let $A$ be the set of all primes from $2$ to $p>19$. Let $q$ be the next prime after $p$. ...
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A mysterious connection between primes and $\pi$
The Prime Number Theorem relates primes to the important constant $e$.
Here I report my following surprising discovery which relates primes to $\pi$.
Conjecture (December 15, 2019). Let $s(n)$ be ...
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An interesting integral expression for $\pi^n$?
I came on the following multiple integral while renormalizing elliptic multiple zeta values:
$$\int_0^1\cdots \int_0^1\int_1^\infty {{1}\over{t_n(t_{n-1}+t_n)\cdots (t_1+\cdots+t_n)}} dt_n\cdots dt_1.$...
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When has the Borel-Cantelli heuristic been wrong?
The Borel-Cantelli lemma is very frequently used to give a heuristic for whether or not certain statements in number theory are true.
For example, it gives some evidence that there are finitely many ...
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Walsh Fourier transform of the Möbius function
This question is related to this previous question where I asked about ordinary Fourier coefficients.
Special case: is Möbius nearly orthogonal to Morse
August Ferdinand Möbius (November 17, 1790 – ...
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What does Mellin inversion "really mean"?
Given a function $f: \mathbb{R}^+ \rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ satisfying suitable conditions (exponential decay at infinity, continuous, and bounded variation) is good enough, its Mellin transform is ...
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Distribution of square roots mod 1
I was wondering about the distribution of $\sqrt{p}$ mod $1$ this morning, as one does while brushing one's teeth. I remembered the paper of Elkies and McMullen (Duke Math. J. 123 (2004), no. 1, 95–...
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Is the Riemann zeta function surjective?
Is the Riemann zeta function surjective or does it miss one value?
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Motivated account of the prime number theorem and related topics
Though my own research interests (described below) are pretty far from analytic number theory, I have always wanted to understand the prime number theorem and related topics. In particular, I often ...
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If the Riemann Hypothesis fails, must it fail infinitely often?
That is must there either be no non-trivial zeros off the critical line or
infinitely many?
I'm sure that no one believes otherwise, but I've never seen a theorem in the
literature addressing this. ...
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The Hardy Z-function and failure of the Riemann hypothesis
David Feldman asked whether it would be reasonable for the Riemann hypothesis to be false, but for the Riemann zeta function to only have finitely many zeros off the critical line. I very rashly ...
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Is this Riemann zeta function product equal to the Fourier transform of the von Mangoldt function?
Mathematica knows that:
$$\log(n) = \lim\limits_{s \rightarrow 1} \zeta(s)\left(1 - \frac{1}{n^{(s - 1)}}\right)\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\; (1)$$
The von Mangoldt function should then be:
$$\Lambda(n)=...
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How and when do I learn so much mathematics?
I am about to (hopefully!) begin my PhD (in Europe) and I have a question: how did you learn so much mathematics?
Allow me to explain. I am training to be a number theorist and I have only some read ...
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Class Numbers and 163
This is a bit fluffier of a question than I usually aim for, so apologies in advance if this doesn't pass the smell test for suitability.
Likely my favorite fun fact in all of number theory is the ...
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Why could Mertens not prove the prime number theorem?
We know that
$$
\sum_{n \le x}\frac{1}{n\ln n} = \ln\ln x + c_1 + O(1/x)
$$
where $c_1$ is a constant. Again Mertens' theorem says that the primes $p$ satisfy
$$
\sum_{p \le x}\frac{1}{p} = \ln\ln ...
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Why is so much work done on numerical verification of the Riemann Hypothesis?
I have noticed that there is a huge amount of work which has been done on numerically verifying the Riemann hypothesis for larger and larger non-trivial zeroes.
I don't mean to ask a stupid question, ...
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Is it possible to show that $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{\mu(n)}{\sqrt{n}}$ diverges?
Let $\mu(n)$ denote the Mobius function with the well-known Dirichlet series representation
$$
\frac{1}{\zeta(s)} = \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{\mu(n)}{n^{s}}.
$$
Basic theorems about Dirichlet series ...
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Why such an interest in studying prime gaps?
Prime gaps studies seems to be one of the most fertile topics in analytic number theory, for long and in lots of directions :
lower bounds (recent works by Maynard, Tao et al. [1])
upper bounds (...
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Iterated logarithms in analytic number theory
As all analytic number theorists know, iterated logarithms ($\log x$, $\log \log x$, $\log \log \log x$, etc.) are prevalent in analytic number theory. One can give countless examples of this ...
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Approaches to Riemann hypothesis using methods outside number theory [closed]
Background: Once an analytic number theorist remarked to me that all attempts to prove the Riemann hypothesis using number theoretic methods have failed. Since then that remark stuck in my mind.
The ...
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Is this integral representation of $\zeta(2n+1)$ known?
Background: I'm an undergraduate at an institution with no researchers in analytic number theory, and no ties to the analytic number theory community. I believe I have found what is, as far as I can ...
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How should an analytic number theorist look at Bessel functions?
(And a related question: Where should an analytic number theorist learn about Bessel functions?)
Bessel functions occur quite frequently in analytic number theory. One example, Corollary 4.7 of ...
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Is Li(x) the best possible approximation to the prime-counting function?
The Prime Number Theorem says that $\lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{\pi(n)}{\mathrm{Li}(n)} = 1$, where $\mathrm{Li}(x)$ is the Logarithm integral function $\mathrm{Li}(x) = \int_2^x \frac{1}{\log(x)}dx$. ...
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"Long-standing conjectures in analysis ... often turn out to be false"
The title is a quote from a Jim Holt article entitled, "The Riemann zeta conjecture and the laughter of the primes" (p. 47).1
His example of a "long-standing conjecture" is the Riemann hypothesis,...
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How does one motivate the analytic continuation of the Riemann zeta function?
I saw the functional equation and its proof for the Riemann zeta function many times, but usually the books start with, e.g. tricky change of variable of Gamma function or other seemingly unmotivated ...
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Intuition behind Harmonic Analysis in Analytic Number Theory
As far as I know, in analytic number theory, harmonic analysis appears often. The thing is that I would see the proof of some results where they use harmonic analysis, and I can follow the argument ...
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Is $\zeta(3)/\pi^3$ rational?
Apery proved in his paper from 1979 that $\zeta(3)$ is irrational, and we know that for all integers $n$,
$\zeta(2n)=\alpha \pi^{2n}$
for some $\alpha\in \mathbb{Q}$. Given these facts, it seems ...
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Infinite exponential representation of real numbers
I was thinking about infinite exponential representation of real numbers (like $2=e^{e^{-e^{-e^{e^{-e^{e^{e^{-e^{-e^{-e^{-e^{-e^{e^{-e^{e^{e^{-e^{e^{\cdot^{\cdot^{\cdot}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}$.
The ...
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Prime number races in 2 dimensions
Is the mapping $$f: \ \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}[i], \ \ \ n \ \mapsto
\sum_{2 < p \leq n \ {\rm prime}} e^{\frac{p-1}{4} \pi i}$$ surjective?
In 1999, when I was an undergraduate student, ...
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What, exactly, has Louis de Branges proved about the Riemann Hypothesis?
I know this is a dangerous topic which could attract many cranks and nutters, but:
According to Wikipedia [and probably his own website, but I have a hard time seeing exactly what he's claiming] Louis ...
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Is the set of primes "translation-finite"?
The definition in the title probably needs explaining. I should say that the question itself was an idea I had for someone else's undergraduate research project, but we decided early on it would be ...
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Modular forms and the Riemann Hypothesis
Is there any statement directly about modular forms that is equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis for L-functions?
What I'm thinking of is this: under the Mellin transform, the Riemann zeta function $...
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How to prove the identity $L(2,(\frac{\cdot}3))=\frac2{15}\sum\limits_{k=1}^\infty\frac{48^k}{k(2k-1)\binom{4k}{2k}\binom{2k}k}$?
For the Dirichlet character $\chi(a)=(\frac a3)$ (which is the Legendre symbol), we have
$$L(2,\chi)=\sum_{n=1}^\infty\frac{(\frac n3)}{n^2}=0.781302412896486296867187429624\ldots.$$
Note that this ...
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The Bourgain-Demeter-Guth breakthrough and the Riemann zeta function?
Yesterday Bourgain, Demeter and Guth released a preprint proving (up to endpoints) the so-called main conjecture of the Vinogradov's Mean Value Theorem for all degrees. This had previously been only ...
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Why do primes dislike dividing the sum of all the preceding primes?
I was investigating primes with the property that the sum of the first $n$ primes is divisible by $p_n$. It turns out that these primes are extremely extremely rare. For primes less than $10^9$, I ...
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Heuristic argument for the Riemann Hypothesis
Is there a heuristic argument that supports the validity of the Riemann hypothesis or are we just relying on numerical evidence? Moreover, what is the strongest theorem that supports the validity of ...
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Looking for some interesting complex integration contours
I am currently working on some tools to make contour integration in a proof assistant less painful and I'm looking for interesting examples of contours in the complex plane used in the literature. I ...
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Lagrange four squares theorem
Lagrange's four square theorem states that every non-negative integer is a sum of squares of four non-negative integers. Suppose $X$ is a subset of non-negative integers with the same property, that ...
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