Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: An old conjecture dating back at least to Hildebrand's work in 1989, asserts that the Möbius function exhibits cancellation on shifted primes; that is, $$\sum_{p\le x}μ(p+2)=o(π(x)),\quad \text{or equivalently}\quad \sum_{n\le x}Λ(n)μ(n+2)=o(x).$$ This is also a well-known model case for the parity problem in sieve theory. In this paper, we prove this conjecture. As an application, we show that each of the two sets $\{p:\, μ(p+2)=1\}$ and $\{p:\, μ(p+2)=-1\}$ has asymptotic density $1/2$ among the primes $p$ with $μ^2(p+2)=1$: \begin{equation*} \lim_{x\to\infty} \frac{\#\{p\le x:\ μ(p+2)=κ\}} {\#\{p\le x:\ μ^2(p+2)=1\}} =\frac12, \quad κ\in\{-1,\,1\}. \end{equation*}
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Lü, Guangshi, Wang, Zhiwei, Wu, Jie
Language: English
Subfield: Algebra and Number Theory
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221929628