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There has been a remarkable breakthrough towards the Riemann hypothesis (though still very far from fully resolving this conjecture) by Guth and Maynard making the first substantial improvement to a classical 1940 bound of Ingham regarding the zeroes of the Riemann zeta function (and more generally, controlling the large values of various Dirichlet series): arxiv.org/abs/2405.20552

Let 𝑁(σ,𝑇) denote the number of zeroes of the Riemann zeta function with real part at least σ and imaginary part at most 𝑇 in magnitude. The Riemann hypothesis tells us that 𝑁(σ,𝑇) vanishes for any σ>1/2. We of course can't prove this unconditionally. But as the next best thing, we can prove zero density estimates, which are non-trivial upper bounds on 𝑁(σ,𝑇). It turns out that the value σ=3/4 is a key value. In 1940, Ingham obtained the bound N(3/4,T)T3/5+o(1). Over the next eighty years, the only improvement to this bound has been small refinements to the 𝑜(1) error. This has limited us from doing many things in analytic number theory: for instance, to get a good prime number theorem in almost all short intervals of the form (x,x+xθ), we have long been limited to the range θ>1/6, with the main obstacle being the lack of improvement to the Ingham bound. (1/3)

arXiv.orgNew large value estimates for Dirichlet polynomialsWe prove new bounds for how often Dirichlet polynomials can take large values. This gives improved estimates for a Dirichlet polynomial of length $N$ taking values of size close to $N^{3/4}$, which is the critical situation for several estimates in analytic number theory connected to prime numbers and the Riemann zeta function. As a consequence, we deduce a zero density estimate $N(σ,T)\le T^{30(1-σ)/13+o(1)}$ and asymptotics for primes in short intervals of length $x^{17/30+o(1)}$.

@tao How do the coefficients appear? I would appreciate anyone help just to not waste professor Tao's time if possible, just read the Scientific American article and while this is beyond me also watched both videos and gave a look to the paper but I'm still feel confused, in the first video professor Maynard says that if N(σ,T)TA(1σ)+o(1) then the asymptotics for primes in short intervals are x(11/A), and that Ingham and Huxley gave the bounds N(σ,T)T3(1σ)2σ+o(1) and N(σ,T)T3(1σ)3σ1+o(1) respectively and in the new paper they introduce the bound N(σ,T)T15(1σ)3+5σ+o(1), so the Ingham and Huxley bounds have the same exponent for σ=3/4 and the Ingham and Guth-Maynard bounds have the same exponent for σ=7/10 and so plugging those values in their respective denominators gives T125(1σ)+o(1) and T3013(1σ)+o(1), therefore they say that the exponent improved from A=12/5 to A=30/13 (theorem 1.2) or equivalently from 1-1/A=7/12 to 1-1/A=17/30 (Corollary 1.3) but I'm confused because these are taken around different points.

They also say that the Ingham and Huxley estimate around σ=3/4 bound the error R of N(σ,T) by RT35+o(1) and that they improve that to RT1325+o(1) (theorem 1.1) but how is that equivalently to improve the asymptotics from 1/6 to 2/15, I mean there is no clear translation as with the pair (A, 1-1/A) from before.

@dabed Here is a plot of the key upper bounds on the exponent A(σ) in the zero density estimate N(σ,T)TA(σ)(1σ)+o(1). For applications to the primes, the key quantity is 𝐴, which is the supremum of all the A(σ). Prior to the work of Guth and Maynard, the supremum was attained at σ=3/4; but as one can see from the graph, the new bound of Guth and Maynard has shifted the location where the supremum is attained to σ=7/10.

@tao Ah I see, sorry for making you draw it for me and sorry again as it was clear too in the previous graph that you posted, I should have realized this even without graphs and yet here I am.

About the improvement of the asymptotics from 1/6 to 2/15, I did a search ctrl+f+1/25 and got a second hit in the last page (p. 48) and it seems these numbers appear after some math that it isn't done in the paper and which I probably wouldn't understand anyway as I read only until section 2 (p. 8) grasping a mere fraction of it.

May I bother you a bit more to ask you what prompt you used for the first graph or some tips to reproduce it? I tried a bit but didn't get even a little close

Terence Tao

@dabed Here is the ChatGPT prompt I used last month when I first started plotting: chatgpt.com/share/bd7dd76b-d00. Since then I have been able to modify the code provided for my own purposes. Note: the inbuilt code plugin did not display the updated graphs properly (I think because GPT only provided the portion of the code that was updated, rather than the full code), but the actual code generated by GPT was largely correct.

chatgpt.comChatGPTA conversational AI system that listens, learns, and challenges

@tao Thanks! I created a subsection about the density hypothesis on the wikipedia article on the Lindelöf hypothesis with what I was able to grasp. (ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindelöf_hypothesis#The_density_hypothesis)

I can't use a third party image that has no Creative Commons license, that is why I needed the code to create my own version and upload it with CC license, in the Wikimedia summary I clarified it was generated using your code, and the caption is also the same you wrote.

If the Riemann hypothesis would push the diagram down to the x-axis then the RH is kind of equivalent to proving A(σ)=0 or did I understand wrong?

@dabed The RH implies that A(σ)=0 for σ>1/2, but is even stronger than that claim. For instance, if there were a finite number of zeroes of zeta to the right of the critical strip, then A(σ) would still be zero for σ>1/2, but the Riemann hypothesis would now be false.

There are also several more known zero density theorems beyond the ones of Ingham, Huxley, and Guth-Maynard, but the complete picture is rather complicated to state, and these theorems only give improvements in the range σ>3/4 (this is why Guth-Maynard was a significant breakthrough, as it was the first in decades to affect the critical value σ=3/4. See Table 2 of arxiv.org/abs/2306.05599 .

arXiv.orgToward optimal exponent pairsWe quantify the set of known exponent pairs $(k, \ell)$ and develop a framework to compute the optimal exponent pair for an arbitrary objective function. Applying this methodology, we make progress on several open problems, including bounds of the Riemann zeta-function $ζ(s)$ in the critical strip, estimates of the moments of $ζ(1/2 + it)$ and the generalised Dirichlet divisor problem.

@tao Ah right thanks I was clearly playing with the quantities without thinking correctly about their meaning.

While I don't want to trouble you asking more, truth is I don't understand enough to generate anymore questions.

I just saw now that ArXiv also contains a blog post of yours where the paper is cited and that you were working on the same even before being aware of it, funny to see how ideas converge specially when evidently it isn't an easy task with the vastness of all the previous results.

Thanks a lot for your help and all the best!