Brun’s constant is the summation of the reciprocals of all twin primes, given by

$$ \begin{align*}B=\sum_{p \in P_2}{\bigg( \frac{1}{p} + \frac{1}{p+2}\bigg)}.\end{align*} $$

While rigorous unconditional bounds on B are known, we present the first rigorous bound on Brun’s constant under the assumption of GRH, yielding $B < 2.1594$.

We study the distribution of consecutive sums of two squares in arithmetic progressions. We show that for any odd squarefree modulus q, any two reduced congruence classes $a_1$ and $a_2$ mod q, and any $r_1,r_2 \ge 1$, a positive density of sums of two squares begin a chain of $r_1$ consecutive sums of two squares, all of which are $a_1$ mod q, followed immediately by a chain of $r_2$ consecutive sums of two squares, all of which are $a_2$ mod q. This is an analog of the result of Maynard for the sequence of primes, showing that for any reduced congruence class a mod q and for any $r \ge 1$, a positive density of primes begin a sequence of r consecutive primes, all of which are a mod q.

We show that there exists some $\delta > 0$ such that, for any set of integers B with $|B\cap[1,Y]|\gg Y^{1-\delta}$ for all $Y \gg 1$, there are infinitely many primes of the form $a^2+b^2$ with $b\in B$. We prove a quasi-explicit formula for the number of primes of the form $a^2+b^2 \leq X$ with $b \in B$ for any $|B|=X^{1/2-\delta}$ with $\delta < 1/10$ and $B \subseteq [\eta X^{1/2},(1-\eta)X^{1/2}] \cap {\mathbb{Z}}$, in terms of zeros of Hecke L-functions on ${\mathbb{Q}}(i)$. We obtain the expected asymptotic formula for the number of such primes provided that the set B does not have a large subset which consists of multiples of a fixed large integer. In particular, we get an asymptotic formula if B is a sparse subset of primes. For an arbitrary B we obtain a lower bound for the number of primes with a weaker range for $\delta$, by bounding the contribution from potential exceptional characters.

Let $g \geq 1$ be an integer and let $A/\mathbb Q$ be an abelian variety that is isogenous over $\mathbb Q$ to a product of g elliptic curves defined over $\mathbb Q$, pairwise non-isogenous over $\overline {\mathbb Q}$ and each without complex multiplication. For an integer t and a positive real number x, denote by $\pi _A(x, t)$ the number of primes $p \leq x$, of good reduction for A, for which the Frobenius trace $a_{1, p}(A)$ associated to the reduction of A modulo p equals t. Assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis for Dedekind zeta functions, we prove that $\pi _A(x, 0) \ll _A x^{1 - \frac {1}{3 g+1 }}/(\operatorname {log} x)^{1 - \frac {2}{3 g+1}}$ and $\pi _A(x, t) \ll _A x^{1 - \frac {1}{3 g + 2}}/(\operatorname {log} x)^{1 - \frac {2}{3 g + 2}}$ if $t \neq 0$. These bounds largely improve upon recent ones obtained for $g = 2$ by Chen, Jones, and Serban, and may be viewed as generalizations to arbitrary g of the bounds obtained for $g=1$ by Murty, Murty, and Saradha, combined with a refinement in the power of $\operatorname {log} x$ by Zywina. Under the assumptions stated above, we also prove the existence of a density one set of primes p satisfying $|a_{1, p}(A)|>p^{\frac {1}{3 g + 1} - \varepsilon }$ for any fixed $\varepsilon>0$.

We prove a generalization of the author’s work to show that any subset of the primes which is ‘well distributed’ in arithmetic progressions contains many primes which are close together. Moreover, our bounds hold with some uniformity in the parameters. As applications, we show there are infinitely many intervals of length $(\log x)^{{\it\epsilon}}$ containing $\gg _{{\it\epsilon}}\log \log x$ primes, and show lower bounds of the correct order of magnitude for the number of strings of $m$ congruent primes with $p_{n+m}-p_{n}\leqslant {\it\epsilon}\log x$ .

Let Rk(n) denote the number of representations of a natural number n as the sum of three cubes and a kth power. In this paper, we show that R3(n) [Lt] n5/9+ε, and that R4(n) [Lt] n47/90+ε, where ε > 0 is arbitrary. This extends work of Hooley concerning sums of four cubes, to the case of sums of mixed powers. To achieve these bounds, we use a variant of the Selberg sieve method introduced by Hooley to study sums of two kth powers, and we also use various exponential sum estimates.

Let $p_n$ be the $n$th prime. Then this paper is concerned withproving the following result on the distribution of consecutive primes.

Theorem.}\begin{equation}\sum_{p_{n+1}-p_n>x^{\frac 12},\ x \leq p_n \leq 2x} (p_{n+1}-p_n)\llx^{\frac{25}{36}+\epsilon}.\end{equation}

The exponent of $x$ in this theorem improves on the workof Heath-Brown who proved $(1)$ with exponent $\frac 34$. Under the Riemann hypothesis one can prove$(1)$ withexponent $\frac 12$.The proof of the theorem startswith the Heath-Brown--Linnik identity which leads to aformula giving the number of primes in an interval in terms of coefficients of certain Dirichlet series. Ithen estimate the coefficients by using, among other things, the information which can be gained fromMontgomery's mean value theorem and Huxley's version of the Hal\' asz lemma. Furthermore, by using familiarsieve arguments I am able to discard some of the coefficients allowing us to gain an improvement over theprevious result of Heath-Brown.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: 11N05.