For every natural n, construct a series of n consecutive numbers that are composite of at least two different primes

100 Views Asked by At

Consider the following problem:

For every $n\in\mathbb{N}$ there exists a series $a_1,...,a_n$ of consecutive numbers s.t. $\forall i. a_i$ is not a power of a prime number (its factorization exists of at least 2 different primes)

Does the following solution hold?

$x\equiv0(2)$

$x\equiv0(3)$

$x+1\equiv0(5)$

$x+1\equiv0(7)$

$...$

$x+(n-1)\equiv0(p_{2n-1})$

$x+(n-1)\equiv0(p_{2n})$

And then construct the series $x,x+1,...,x+(n-1)$

Using the Chinese remainder theorem, there exists a solution. Because each member of the series is congruent to 0 modulu two different prime numbers, it must be a composite of at least 2 different primes.

Thank you in advance.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On

Well, that's an easy problem. Powers are rare (prime powers even more so), hence there are arbitrarily large gaps between them, which can be proven in a multitude of ways. Your solution is totally OK. Here is another: let's see how many powers are there below some huge $N$. (Let's be generous and consider all of them, not just prime powers.) Apparently, there are no more than $\lfloor\sqrt N\rfloor+\lfloor\sqrt[3]N\rfloor+\lfloor\sqrt[4]N\rfloor+\dots$ of them, which is less than $\log_2N\cdot\sqrt N$, which means that the largest gap between them is bounded from below with ${N\over\log_2N\cdot\sqrt N}={\sqrt N\over\log_2N}$, which can be made arbitrarily large.