Consecutive primes and Legendre symbols

Hao Pan, Zhi-Wei Sun

Published 2014-06-23, updated 2015-04-27Version 3

Let $m$ be any positive integer and let $\delta_1,\delta_2\in\{1,-1\}$. We show that for some constanst $C_m>0$ there are infinitely many integers $n>1$ with $p_{n+m}-p_n\le C_m$ such that $$\left(\frac{p_{n+i}}{p_{n+j}}\right)=\delta_1\ \quad\text{and}\ \quad\left(\frac{p_{n+j}}{p_{n+i}}\right)=\delta_2$$ for all $0\le i<j\le m$, where $p_k$ denotes the $k$-th prime, and $(\frac {\cdot}p)$ denotes the Legendre symbol for any odd prime $p$. We also prove that under the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis there are infinitely many positive integers $n$ such that $p_{n+i}$ is a primitive root modulo $p_{n+j}$ for any distinct $i$ and $j$ among $0,1,\ldots,m$.