Sums over primitive sets with a fixed number of prime factors

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Mathematics

Publication Date

3-5-2019

Abstract

A primitive set is one in which no element of the set divides another. Erdős conjectured that the sum f(A) :=∑n∈A 1/nlogn taken over any primitive set A would be greatest when A is the set of primes. More recently, Banks and Martin have generalized this conjecture to claim that, if we let Nk represent the set of integers with precisely k prime factors(counted with multiplicity), then we have f(N1) > f(N2) > f(N3) > ···. The first of these inequalities was established by Zhang; we establish the second. Our methods involve explicit bounds on the density of integers with precisely k prime factors. In particular, we establish an explicit version of the Hardy-Ramanujan theorem on the density of integers with k prime factors.

Comments

This article was originally published in Mathematics of Computation. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Mathematics of Computation

Copyright

© Copyright 2019 American Mathematical Society

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