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In mathematics, a formula for primes is a formula generating the prime numbers, exactly and without exception. No easily-computable such formula is known. A great deal is known about what, more precisely, such a "formula" can and cannot be.
Prime formulas and polynomial functions
It is known that no non-constantpolynomial function P(n) exists that evaluates to a prime number for all integers n. The proof is simple: Suppose such a polynomial existed. Then P(1) would evaluate to a prime p, so . But for any k, also, so cannot also be prime (as it would be divisible by p) unless it were p itself, but the only way for all k is if the polynomial function is constant.
is prime for all non-negative integers less than 40. The primes for n = 0, 1, 2, 3... are 41, 43, 47, 53, 61, 71... The differences between the terms are 2, 4, 6, 8, 10... For n = 40, it produces a square number, 1681, which is equal to 41×41, the smallest composite number for this formula. In fact if 41 divides n it divides P(n) too. The phenomenon is related to the Ulam spiral, which is also implicitly quadratic, and the class number;
this polynomial is related to the Heegner number, and there are analogous polynomials for , corresponding to other Heegner numbers.
It is known, based on Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions, that linear polynomial functions produce infinitely many primes as long as a and b are relatively prime (though no such function will assume prime values for all values of n). Moreover, the Green-Tao theorem says that for any k there exists a pair of a and b with the property that is prime for any n from 0 to k−1. However, the best known result of such type is for k = 25:
6171054912832631 + 81737658082080n is prime for all n from 0 to 24 (Andersen 2008).
It is not known whether there exists a univariate polynomial of degree at least 2 that assumes an infinite number of values that are prime.
Formula based on a system of Diophantine equations
A system of 14 Diophantine equations in 26 variables can be used to obtain a Diophantine representation of the set of all primes. Jones et al. (1976) proved that a given number k + 2 is prime if and only if the following system of 14 Diophantine equations has a solution in the natural numbers:
α0 = = 0
α1 = = 0
α2 = = 0
α3 = = 0
α4 = = 0
α5 = = 0
α6 = = 0
α7 = = 0
α8 = = 0
α9 = = 0
α10 = = 0
α11 = = 0
α12 = = 0
α13 = = 0
The 14 equations α0, …, α13 can be used to produce a prime-generating polynomial inequality in 26 variables:
ie:
is a polynomial inequality in 26 variables, and the set of prime numbers is identical to the set of positive values taken on by this polynomial inequality as the variables a, b, …, z range over the nonnegative integers.
A general theorem of Matiyasevich says that if a set is defined by a system of Diophantine equations, it can also be defined by a system of Diophantine equations in only 9 variables. Hence, there is a prime-generating polynomial as above with only 10 variables. However, its degree is large (in the order of 1045). On the other hand, there also exists such a set of equations of degree only 4, but in 58 variables (Jones 1982).
Formulas using the floor function
Using the floor function (defined to be the largest integer less than or equal to the real numberx), one can construct several formulas that take only prime numbers as values for all positive integers n.
Mills's formula
The first such formula known was established in 1947 by W. H. Mills, who proved that there exists a real numberA such that
is a prime number for all positive integers n. If the Riemann hypothesis is true, then the smallest such A has a value of around 1.3063... and is known as Mills' constant. This formula has no practical value, because very little is known about the constant (not even whether it is rational), and there is no known way of calculating the constant without finding primes in the first place.
There is another, quite different formula discovered by Sebastián Martín-Ruiz (Rivera n.d.) and proved with Jonathan Sondow (Martin-Ruiz & Sondow 2002):
To understand the behavior of this function note the following equalities:
Converting primality tests to prime number formulas
Any primality test can be used as the basis for a prime number formula. In effect, a test for the primality of is a computation of the function IsPrime(), defined by:
If the primality test is given by a condition on some formula involving then that formula gives a formula for IsPrime(). For example, Wilson's theorem says that is prime if and only if it divides To express this by an explicit formula, one may introduce two intermediate functions:
Then Wilson's theorem says that
This can be further specified by an explicit formula for IsInteger(). Some options are:
Then, for example, taking the first option gives a formula for IsPrime() using Wilson's theorem:
Once IsPrime() can be computed, the prime counting function can as well, since by definition
can then compute a function testing whether a given integer is the th prime:
The function IsZero() can likewise be expressed by a formula:
where for example when is an integer (such as is the case in IsNthPrime()),
Finally, the IsNthPrime() function can be used to produce a formula for the th prime:
The upper bound 2 comes from Bertrand's postulate, which implies that there is a sequence of primes
where Thus,
Substituting the formulas above and applying Wilson's theorem gives a formula for involving the arithmetic operations and the floor function. Other such formulas are:
in which the following equality is important:
and
by Sebastián Martín-Ruiz and proved with Jonathan Sondow (Martin-Ruiz & Sondow 2002). A similar formula for was given earlier by Stephen Regimbal (Regimbal 1975).
where gcd(x, y) denotes the greatest common divisor of x and y. The sequence of differences an + 1 − an starts with 1, 1, 1, 5, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 11, 3, 1, 1 (sequence A132199 in the OEIS). Rowlands (2008) harvtxt error: no target: CITEREFRowlands2008 (help) proved that this sequence contains only ones and prime numbers.
Recursive formula
This is a primitive recursive formula by Liu Fengsui.
Let
be the arbitrary finite sets of natural numbers, we define
Let be the set subtraction.
Let , let be the projective function. Then we have a formula
By the induction, it is easy to prove that is the reduced residue system , the reduced residue system is closed under the multiplication of residue classes, so that the least number except 1
in the reduced residue system is the prime .
One plugs i nto this formula, this formula will produce the i-th prime without testing. This primitive recursive
function actually exhibits infinitely many primes, it
provides a constructive proof of Eucilid's result. Now the
primes appear in a highly regular pattern, the occurrence of
individual primes among the natural numbers follows well-defined laws also.
Jones, James P.; Sato, Daihachiro; Wada, Hideo; Wiens, Douglas (1976), "Diophantine representation of the set of prime numbers", American Mathematical Monthly, 83: 449–464, doi:10.2307/2318339.
Jones, James P. (1982), "Universal diophantine equation", Journal of Symbolic Logic, 47: 549–571.
A Venugopalan. Formula for primes, twinprimes, number of primes and number of twinprimes. Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences – Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 92, No 1, September 1983, pp. 49-52. Page 49, 50, 51, 52, errata.