Conjecture on the typical height of Pratt trees

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For a prime pp, let H(p)H(p) be the height of its Pratt tree: the tree with root pp, whose children are the prime factors of p−1p-1, constructed recursively, stopping at p=2p=2. Let π(x)\pi(x) denote the number of primes at most xx. Pratt-tree height conjecture. There exist constants c,c′>0c,c'>0 and real numbers {E(p):p prime}\{E(p):p~\mathrm{prime}\} such that

H(p)=elog⁡p−32log⁡log⁡p+E(p),H(p)= e\log p - \frac{3}{2} \log\log p + E(p),

for all z⩾0z\geqslant 0 and x⩾0x\geqslant 0,

e−c′zπ(x)≪∣{primes p⩽x:E(p)⩾z}∣≪e−czπ(x),e^{-c' z} \pi(x) \ll |\{\mathrm{primes}~p \leqslant x: E(p) \geqslant z\}| \ll e^{-cz} \pi(x),

and

∣{primes p⩽x:E(p)⩽−z}∣≪exp⁡(−ecx)π(x).|\{\mathrm{primes}~p \leqslant x: E(p) \leqslant -z\}| \ll \exp(-e^{cx})\pi(x).

The conjecture describes the typical height of Pratt trees and is motivated by results supporting branching-random-walk heuristics; the source provides no resolution, so its status remains open.

References

Primary source

Louigi Addario-Berry and Kevin Ford, “Poisson-Dirichlet branching random walks”, arXiv:1012.2544 (2013).

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