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Bateman-Horn conjecture

In number theory, the Bateman-Horn conjecture is a vast generalization of such conjectures as the Hardy and Littlewood conjecture on the density of twin primes or their conjecture on primes of the form n2+1; it is also a strengthening of Schinzel's hypothesis H.

It provides a conjectured density for the condition that all of a set of polynomials evaluated at a positive integer give a prime number. The set of polynomials f_1, \cdots f_m are m distinct, irreducible polynomials with integer coefficients, such that the leading coefficients are positive and such that if f is the product of all the polynomials fi, then there does not exist a prime number p dividing f(n) for every positive integer n. If P(x) is the number of positive integers less than x such that all of the polynomials evaluate to a prime, then the conjecture is

P(x) \sim \frac{C}{D} \int_2^x \frac{dz}{(\ln z)^m},\,

where C is the product over primes p

C = \prod_p \frac{1-N(p)/p}{(1-1/p)^m}

with N(p) the number of mod p solutions to f(n) \equiv 0 \pmod p where f is the product of the polynomials fi, and D is the product of the degrees of the polynomials, or in other words the degree of f.

References

Bateman, P. T. and Horn, R. A., A heuristic asymptotic formula concerning the distribution of prime numbers, Mathematics of Computation 16 (1962), pp 363-367

01-04-2007 01:18:14
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