The conjecture on the variance of primes in short intervals

Let ψ(x)=nxΛ(n)\psi(x)=\sum_{n\leqslant x}\Lambda(n) be the Chebyshev function. Short-interval variance conjecture. For all ε>0\varepsilon>0, if hX1εh\leqslant X^{1-\varepsilon}, then

0X(ψ(x+h)ψ(x)h)2dx=(1+oε(1))hXlog(X/h)\int_0^X\big(\psi(x+h)-\psi(x)-h\big)^2\,dx=(1+o_\varepsilon(1))hX\log(X/h)

as XX\to\infty. This conjecture gives the expected variance of the number of primes in short intervals and, under the Riemann Hypothesis, is equivalent to Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture; it remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Aled Walker, “Correlations of sieve weights and distributions of zeros”, arXiv:2101.04418 (2022).

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