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The Hayden Howard Lecture: Small Gaps Between Primes

Date:
-
Location:
room TBA of the White Hall Classroom Building
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Yitang Zhang, University of New Hampshire

The twin prime conjecture states that there are infinitely many pairs of distinct primes which differ by 2. Until recently this conjecture had seemed to be out of reach with current techniques. However, in 2013, it was proved that there are infinitely many pairs of distinct primes which differ by no more than B with B = 7 · 107 . Since then, the value of B has been considerably improved by others. In this talk we shall describe the basic ideas which lead to the proof of the above results. In particular, we shall discuss a breakthrough on the distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions which plays an important role in the proof.

 Refreshments will be served at 3:30 pm in room 745 of the Patterson Office Tower.