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Tackling Andrica's Conjecture - Part 3

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May 28, 2013

CPOL

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Andrica's conjecture is one of those mathematical statements which are extremely easy to formulate, but complicated to prove. This is my third attempt.

Introduction

Here is an interesting, but slightly detached from the previous two articles, result ...

Let's look at the following two sequences:

$a_{n}=\sqrt{p_{n+1}} - \sqrt{p_{n}}\\ b_{n}=\ln\left ( \frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}} {1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )^{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}}$

Here is a short Python code to visualise the sequences:

import math
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

primes = []

def isPrime(n):
    l = int(math.sqrt(n)) + 1
    for i in xrange(2,l):
        if (n % i) == 0:
            return False
    return True

def calculateLog(sqrt_p1, sqrt_p2):
    sqrt_1_p2 = 1.0 + sqrt_p2
    r = math.log(sqrt_1_p2/(1.0 + sqrt_p1))
    return r * sqrt_1_p2

N = 1500000

print "populate primes ..."
for i in xrange(2, N):
    if isPrime(i):
        primes.append(i);

sqrt_diff = [] # sqrt diffs
diff = []      # simple diffs
log_calcs = [] # log calcs
x = []
for i in xrange(1, len(primes)):
    sqrt_p2 = math.sqrt(primes[i])
    sqrt_p1 = math.sqrt(primes[i-1])
    sqrt_diff.append(sqrt_p2 - sqrt_p1)
    diff.append(primes[i] - primes[i-1])
    log_calcs.append(calculateLog(sqrt_p1, sqrt_p2))
    x.append(i)

for i in xrange(len(sqrt_diff)):
    print sqrt_diff[i]," = s(",primes[i+1],") - s(",primes[i],")"

plt.subplot(311)
plt.plot(x, sqrt_diff)
plt.subplot(312)
plt.plot(x, log_calcs)
plt.subplot(313)
plt.hist(diff, 1000)
plt.show()

And here is how both sequences look like (\(a_{n}\) the first and \(b_{n}\) the second):

Quite asymptotic, aren't they? Indeed they are ...

Lemma 3.

$\sqrt{p_{n+1}} - \sqrt{p_{n}} \leq \ln\left ( \frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}} {1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )^{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}} \leq \left ( \frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}} {1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )\cdot \left ( \sqrt{p_{n+1}} - \sqrt{p_{n}} \right )$

Let's look at this function \(f_{6}(x)=\frac{\sqrt{p_{n+1}}}{1+x\cdot \sqrt{p_{n+1}}}\). Obviously \({\ln\left ( 1+x\cdot \sqrt{p_{n+1}} \right )}'=f_{6}(x)\) As a result

$\int_{\sqrt{\frac{p_ {n}}{p_{n+1}}}}^{1} f_{6}\left ( x \right )dx = \ln\left ( 1+x\cdot \sqrt{p_{n+1}} \right )|_{\sqrt{\frac{p_{n}}{p_{n+1}}}}^{1}=\ln\left ( \frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}} {1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )$

According to Mean Value Theorem, \(\exists \mu \in \left (\sqrt{\frac{p_{n}}{p_{n+1}}} ,1 \right )\) such that:

$\int_ {\sqrt{\frac{p_{n}}{p_{n+1}}}}^{1} f_{6}\left ( x \right )dx = f_{6}\left ( \mu \right )\cdot \left ( 1- \sqrt{\frac{p_{n}}{p_{n+1}}} \right )$

Putting all together:

$\ln\left ( \frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right ) = \frac{\sqrt{p_{n+1}} -\sqrt{p_{n}}}{1+\mu \cdot \sqrt{p_{n+1}}}$

Because:

$\sqrt{\frac{p_{n}}{p_{n+1}}}< \mu < 1 \Rightarrow 1+\sqrt{p_{n}}< 1+\mu \cdot \sqrt {p_{n+1}} < 1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}} $

And we get:

$\frac{\sqrt{p_{n+1}}-\sqrt{p_{n}}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}}\leq \ln\left ( \frac{1+\sqrt{p_ {n+1}}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )\leq \frac{\sqrt{p_{n+1}}-\sqrt{p_{n}}}{1+\sqrt{p_ {n}}}$

which proves this lemma.

Noting \(\Delta_{n}=\sqrt{p_{n+1}}-\sqrt{p_{n}}\), this becomes:

$\frac{\Delta_{n}}{1+\sqrt{p_ {n+1}}}\leq \ln\left ( 1 + \frac{\Delta_{n}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )\leq \frac {\Delta_{n}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}}$

or

$\frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n+1}}}\leq \ln\left ( 1 + \frac{\Delta_{n}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )^{\frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} {\Delta_{n}}}\leq 1$

Is this result of any use? I don't know yet, but it looks like:

$\left ( 1 + \frac{\Delta_{n}}{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} \right )^{\frac{1+\sqrt{p_{n}}} {\Delta_{n}}} \rightarrow e, n \to \infty$