Pomerance's shifted-prime smoothness conjecture

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For X,Y≥1X,Y\geq1, let P(n)P(n) be the greatest prime factor of nn, and define

Π(X,Y)=#{p≤X:P(p−1)≤Y}.\Pi(X,Y)=\#\{p\leq X:P(p-1)\leq Y\}.

Let Ψ(X,Y)\Psi(X,Y) denote the count of positive integers at most XX whose prime factors are all at most YY. Pomerance's conjecture. If X,Y→∞X,Y\to\infty with X≥YX\geq Y, then

Π(X,Y)∼Ψ(X,Y)log⁡X.\Pi(X,Y)\sim\frac{\Psi(X,Y)}{\log X}.

This asserts that shifted primes have the same relative smoothness frequency as generic integers. It is used as a conditional input in the paper and remains open in the stated generality.

References

Primary source

Abhishek Jha, Ayan Nath and Emanuele Tron, “The moments of split greatest common divisors”, arXiv:2408.05820 (2026).

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