transfinite arithmetic, cardinal arithmetic, ordinal arithmetic
prime field, p-adic integer, p-adic rational number, p-adic complex number
arithmetic geometry, function field analogy
Bertrand’s postulate, first proven by analytic methods by Chebyshev in 1852, is one of the few simple facts providing precise bounds on the occurrence of prime numbers.
Given an integer , let denote the prime. Bertrand’s postulate is the following.
For any integer , we have that .
There are a number of equivalent formulations of Theorem . One is that, for any integer , there is a prime such that .
Around 2005, it was noticed by Henry J. Ricardo and Yoshihiro Tanaka (Ricardo 05) that Bertrand’s postulate follows from the Goldbach conjecture. We record the proof (of the formulation in Remark ).
If the Goldbach conjecture holds, there are prime numbers and such that . We must have that at least one of and is greater than or equal to . Without loss of generality, suppose that has this property.
If is not prime, then it is immediate that , as required. Suppose instead that is prime. Then is composite, since it must be divisible by .
By Goldbach’s conjecture once more, there are prime numbers and such that . As above, at least one of and must be greater than or equal to . Without loss of generality, suppose that has this property.
Then since is not prime, we have that , and thus that .
Now, is not equal to , for this would imply that , which is impossible. Moreover, is not equal to , since is not prime. We deduce that , as required.
Last revised on October 3, 2018 at 06:10:25. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.