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Department of Mathematics,
University of California San Diego

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Math 209 - Number Theory Seminar

James Maynard

Oxford University

Polynomials representing primes

Abstract:

It is a famous conjecture that any one variable polynomial satisfying some simple conditions should take infinitely many prime values. Unfortunately, this isn't known in any case except for linear polynomials - the sparsity of values of higher degree polynomials causes substantial difficulties. If we look at polynomials in multiple variables, then there are a few polynomials known to represent infinitely many primes whilst still taking on `few' values; Friedlander-Iwaniec showed $X^2+Y^4$ is prime infinitely often, and Heath-Brown showed the same for $X^3+2Y^3$. We will demonstrate a family of multivariate sparse polynomials all of which take infinitely many prime values.

Host: Kiran Kedlaya

February 16, 2017

1:00 PM

AP&M 7321

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