Number of ways to write $2n$ as sum of two primes is unbounded

Question

For all $k>0$, we are to show that
there exists an even number $2n > 0$ that can be written as sum of two primes in at least $k$ ways.
($8=3+5=5+3$ counts as one way)

I tried to use pigeonhole principle to "fill" odd numbers in the lower half of $2n$ with primes, i.e. to show $\pi(2n)-[\frac{n}{2}]$ can be arbitrarily large, but it turns out to diverge to negative infinity instead.
Of course, requiring the entire half to be primes is an overkill, but I don't know how to rephrase the problem into a manageable form.
It probably has something to do with Prime Number Theorem, but I am not sure.

Thank you for any help.

Answer 1

You're on the right track with the pigeonhole principle, but your counting is wrong; you want to get a 'quadratic-like' term to show unboundedness. Try this approach instead: consider how many unordered pairs of primes $\leq n$ there are; call this $f(n)$. Now, note that there are only $n$ even numbers less than $2n$. If each of these could be written as the sum of primes in $\leq C$ different ways for some constant $C$, what would that say about $f(n)$? Can you find a contradiction from here?

Answer 2

There are $\pi(n)-1 \approx \pi(n)$ odd primes less than $n$. Summing them two at a time, we obtain $\frac{(\pi(n))!}{(\pi(n)-2)!2!}=\frac{(\pi(n))\cdot (\pi(n)-1)}{2}$ even sums, all of which are smaller than $2n$. In addition, there are $\pi(n)$ occurrences of sums of the form $p_i+p_i$ not generated by the pairwise summing, and including those with the previous result, we obtain $\frac{(\pi(n))(\pi(n)+1)}{2}\approx \frac{(\pi(n))^2}{2}$ even sums to consider. There are $n$ even numbers smaller than $2n$

If for a chosen $n$ and any $k$, the number of sums exceeds $kn$, then by the pigeon hole principle, at least one even number $\le 2n$ is expressible as a sum of two odd prime numbers in at least $k$ different ways. This occurs with certainty when $\frac{(\pi(n))^2}{2}>kn$ or $(\pi(n))^2>2kn$

According to PNT, $\pi(n) \approx \frac{n}{\ln(n)}$. Substituting, the necessary condition becomes $\frac{n}{\ln^2(n)}>2k$

Since $\frac{n}{\ln^2(n)}$ grows without bound, it is always possible to choose an $n$ large enough to ensure that some even number smaller than $2n$ can be expressed as the sum of two odd primes in at least $k$ different ways.