Siegel zeros, twin primes, Goldbach's conjecture, and primes in short intervals

Kaisa Matomäki, Jori Merikoski

Published 2021-12-21, updated 2022-02-05Version 2

We study the distribution of prime numbers under the unlikely assumption that Siegel zeros exist. In particular we prove for \[ \sum_{n \leq X} \Lambda(n) \Lambda(\pm n+h) \] an asymptotic formula which holds uniformly for $h = O(X)$. Such an asymptotic formula has been previously obtained only for fixed $h$ in which case our result quantitatively improves those of Heath-Brown (1983) and Tao and Ter\"av\"ainen (2021). Since our main theorems work also for large $h$ we can derive new results concerning connections between Siegel zeros and the Goldbach conjecture and between Siegel zeros and primes in almost all very short intervals.