A note on zero-density approaches for the difference between consecutive primes

Valeriia Starichkova

Published 2024-11-04Version 1

In this note, we generalise two results on prime numbers in short intervals. The first result is Ingham's theorem which connects the zero-density estimates with short intervals where the prime number theorem holds, and the second result is due to Heath-Brown and Iwaniec, which derives the weighted zero-density estimates used for obtaining the lower bound for the number of primes in short intervals. The generalised versions of these results make the connections between the zero-free regions, zero-density estimates, and the primes in short intervals more transparent. As an example, the generalisation of Ingham's theorem implies that, under the Density Hypothesis, the prime number theorem holds in $[x - \sqrt{x}\exp(\log^{2/3+\varepsilon}x), x]$, which refines upon the classic interval $[x - x^{1/2+ \varepsilon}, x]$.