Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

Proof of Bertrand's postulate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In mathematics, Bertrand's postulate (actually a theorem) states that for each

there is a prime such that
. It was first proven by Pafnuty
[1]
Chebyshev, and a short but advanced proof was given by Srinivasa Ramanujan. The gist of the following elementary proof is due to Paul Erds. The basic
idea of the proof is to show that a certain central binomial coefficient needs to have a prime factor within the desired interval in order to be large enough. This is
made possible by a careful analysis of the prime factorization of central binomial coefficients.
The main steps of the proof are as follows. First, one shows that every prime power factor
coefficient

is at most

at most one. The next step is to prove that

. In particular, every prime larger than

that enters into the prime decomposition of the central binomial

can enter at most once into this decomposition; that is, its exponent

has no prime factors at all in the gap interval

is

. As a consequence of these two bounds, the contribution

to the size of
coming from all the prime factors that are at most grows asymptotically as
for some
. Since the asymptotic growth of the
central binomial coefficient is at least
, one concludes that for large enough the binomial coefficient must have another prime factor, which can only
lie between and
. Indeed, making these estimates quantitative, one obtains that this argument is valid for all
. The remaining smaller values of
are easily settled by direct inspection, completing the proof of Bertrand's postulate.

Contents
1 Lemmas and computation
1.1 Lemma 1: A lower bound on the central binomial coefficients
1.2 Lemma 2: An upper bound on prime powers dividing central binomial coefficients
1.3 Lemma 3: The exact power of a large prime in a central binomial coefficient
1.4 Lemma 4: An upper bound on the primorial
2 Proof of Bertrand's Postulate
2.1 Proof by Shigenori Tochiori
3 References

Lemmas and computation

1 of 7

03-07-2015 05:45

Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

Lemma 1: A lower bound on the central binomial coefficients

Lemma: For any integer

, we have

Proof: Applying the binomial theorem,

since

is the largest term in the sum in the right-hand side, and the sum has

terms (including the initial two outside the summation).

Lemma 2: An upper bound on prime powers dividing central binomial coefficients

For a fixed prime , define
Lemma: For any prime ,
Proof: The exponent of

to be the largest natural number

such that

divides

.
in

is (see Factorial#Number theory):

so

But each term of the last summation can either be zero (if
Therefore

2 of 7

) or 1 (if

) and all terms with

are zero.

03-07-2015 05:45

Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

and

This completes the proof of the lemma.

Lemma 3: The exact power of a large prime in a central binomial coefficient

Lemma: If

is odd and

, then

Proof: There are exactly two factors of

in the numerator of the expression

, coming from the two terms

and

in

, and also two factors

of in the denominator from two copies of the term in . These factors all cancel, leaving no factors of in
. (The bound on in the preconditions of
the lemma ensures that
is too large to be a term of the numerator, and the assumption that is odd is needed to ensure that
contributes only one factor
of to the numerator.)

Lemma 4: An upper bound on the primorial

We estimate the primorial function,

where the product is taken over all prime numbers

less than or equal to the real number .

Lemma: For all real numbers

[2]

Proof: Since

, it suffices to prove the result under the assumption that

appear in its numerator,

3 of 7

is an integer. Since

is an integer and all the primes

must hold. The proof proceeds by mathematical induction.

03-07-2015 05:45

Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If

:
:
odd,

If

even,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

Thus the lemma is proven.

Proof of Bertrand's Postulate

Assume there is a counterexample: an integer n 2 such that there is no prime p with n < p < 2n.
If 2 n < 468, then p can be chosen from among the prime numbers 3, 5, 7, 13, 23, 43, 83, 163, 317, 631 (each being less than twice its predecessor) such that
n < p < 2n. Therefore n 468.
There are no prime factors p of

such that:

2n < p, because every factor must divide (2n)!;

p = 2n, because 2n is not prime;
n < p < 2n, because we assumed there is no such prime number;
2n / 3 < p n: by Lemma 3.
Therefore, every prime factor p satisfies p 2n/3.
When

the number

has at most one factor of p. By Lemma 2, for any prime p we have pR(p,n) 2n, so the product of the pR(p,n) over the

primes less than or equal to

is at most
finally using Lemma 4, these bounds give:

. Then, starting with Lemma 1 and decomposing the right-hand side into its prime factorization, and

Taking logarithms yields to

4 of 7

03-07-2015 05:45

Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

By concavity of the right-hand side as a function of n, the last inequality is necessarily verified on an interval. Since it holds true for n=467 and it does not for
n=468, we obtain

But these cases have already been settled, and we conclude that no counterexample to the postulate is possible.

Proof by Shigenori Tochiori

Using Lemma 4, Tochiori refined Erdos's method and proved if there exists a positive integer
. [3]

such that there is no prime number

then

First, refine lemma 1 to:

Lemma 1': For any integer

, we have

Proof: By induction:

and assuming the truth of the lemma for

Then, refine the estimate of the product of all small primes via a better estimate on
Lemma 5: For any natural number

Proof: Except for

5 of 7

(the number of primes at most

):

, we have

, every prime number has

or

. Thus

is upper bounded by the number of numbers with

or
03-07-2015 05:45

Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

, plus one (since this counts and misses

). Thus

Now, calculating the binomial coefficient as in the previous section, we can use the improved bounds to get (for
):

, which implies

so that

Taking logarithms to get

and dividing both sides by

Now the function

6 of 7

is decreasing for

, so

is decreasing when

. But

03-07-2015 05:45

Proof of Bertrand's postulate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

so

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Bertrand's_postulate

. The remaining cases are proven by an explicit list of primes, as above.

References
1. Ramanujan, S. (1919), "A proof of Bertrand's postulate" (http://www.imsc.res.in/~rao/ramanujan/CamUnivCpapers/Cpaper24/page1.htm), Journal of the Indian
Mathematical Society 11: 181182
2. http://www.chart.co.jp/subject/sugaku/suken_tsushin/76/76-8.pdf
3. http://www.chart.co.jp/subject/sugaku/suken_tsushin/76/76-8.pdf

Aigner, Martin, G., Gnter M. Ziegler, Karl H. Hofmann, Proofs from THE BOOK, Fourth edition, Springer, 2009. ISBN 978-3-642-00855-9.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proof_of_Bertrand%27s_postulate&oldid=642974650"
Categories: Prime numbers Factorial and binomial topics Article proofs
This page was last modified on 17 January 2015, at 23:34.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of
Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

7 of 7

03-07-2015 05:45