Skip to main content
5 of 6
added 1 characters in body
Eric Naslund
  • 11.4k
  • 1
  • 66
  • 106

Question 1: The set is dense.

Suppose that we are given a fixed $x\in\mathbb{R}$. Then let $p$ be a large prime. If $p$ is sufficiently large, then there will be a prime $$q\in\left[px,\ px+\left(px\right)^{0.525}\right]$$ by the work of Baker, Harman and Pintz on prime gaps. This implies that $$\left|x-\frac{q}{p}\right|\ll_x p^{-0.475},$$ which becomes arbitrarily small as we take $p\rightarrow\infty $. This proves that for any $\epsilon>0$, there exists $p,q$ such that $\left|x-\frac{q}{p}\right|\leq \epsilon.$

Question 2: We can find infinitely many solutions to $$1\leq qp-rs\leq a$$ for primes $p,q,r,s$ and all $a\geq 26$. Under the Elliott-Halberstam Conjecture, we can take $a\geq 6$.

This is a corollary of the work of Goldston, Graham, Pintz and Yıldırım on the gaps between almost primes. They prove that if $q_n$ is the $n^{th}$ almost prime, then $$\liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty} q_{n+1}-q_n \leq 26,$$ and that the upper bound may be reduced to $6$ under the Elliott-Halberstam Conjecture. Since $q_n=pq$ and $q_{n+1}=rs$ where $p,q,r,s$ are primes, this yields the above claim.

Eric Naslund
  • 11.4k
  • 1
  • 66
  • 106