Weak evidence for Goldbach’s conjecture

Alexandre Bali
October 20, 2018

Abstract
In this tiny paper, we will show our recent work on Goldbach’s con-
jecture, which is about whether (or not) all the even numbers greater
than or equal to 4 can be equated to a sum of two primes. We will
try provide a few weak evidence for the conjecture. We’ll conclude on
a suggestion to prove Goldbach or the weaker conjecture that asks if
infinitely many even numbers can be written as a sum of two primes.

1 Introduction
Goldbach’s conjecture is equivalent to

∀ n ≥ 2, ∃ p ∈ P, 2n − p ∈ P

where P represent the set of primes. One can turn this logical state-
ment as the following relationship
X∞ Y  0 2n − p ∈ P
=0
1 otherwise
n=2 p∈P,p≤n

This is the result we will try to reach heuristically all along this tiny
paper.

2 Weak evidence
Using π the prime-counting function, we have

0 x∈P
= 1 + π(x − 1) − π(x)
1 otherwise

1
We know that π(x) ∼ x/ log x from the prime number theorem. We
then strategically define Π : x 7→ x/ log x to substitute π by the latter.
Stronger heuristical arguments for such a substitution could be that,
by Puiseux series at x = ∞, we can show that
x−1 x
1+ + = 1 + O(1/ log x)
log(x − 1) log x
and that, from this result, we can also show that
1 + π(x − 1) − π(x)
lim =1
p→+∞,p6∈P 1 + (x − 1)/ log(x − 1) − x/ log x

since 1 + π(x − 1) − π(x) = 1 for all x 6∈ P, and that 1 + (x −

1)/ log(x − 1) − x/ log x = O(1/ log x). In some way, we therefore
have 1 + π(x − 1) − π(x) ∼ 1 + (x − 1)/ log(x − 1) − x/ log x − at
least for composite x, but we get why one would state the latter since
primes tend to rarefy. For the 1 + O(1/ log x) part, one can therefore
write that
 
 π(x − 1) − π(x) 
π(x − 1) − π(x) = O(1/ log x) ⇐⇒ lim sup  <∞
x→∞ 1/ log x 

by definition. The statement

L
∃ c ∈ R, ∀ x > c, ∃ L ∈ R, π(x − 1) − π(x) ≤
log x
consequently holds. We will now substitute π by Π. We can say that

∃ c ∈ R, ∀ x > c, ∀ p ∈ P \ {n | n > x},

L
∃ L ∈ R, 1 + Π(2x − p − 1) − Π(2x − p) ≤ 1 +
log(2x − x/2)
from the previous results. If we do the product over p ∈ P, p ≤ x, we
have
Y    π(x)
L
1 + Π(2x − p − 1) − Π(2x − p) ≤ 1 +
log(2x − x/2)
p∈P, p≤x

for sufficiently large x. If for sufficiently large values of x, we can

always take some L < 0, and knowing that the left-hand side has to
be a natural number, we’d have
Y  
∃ c ∈ R, ∀ x > c, 1 + Π(2x − p − 1) − Π(2x − p) < 1
p∈P, p≤x

2
Summing all of these, we get
x  π(n)
X 1
C̃G : x 7→ 1−
log(2n − n/2)
n=2

as a relatively good approximation for the number of counterexamples

of Goldbach’s conjecture below x/2. Replacing π by Π, we get
x  n/ log n
˜ X 1
C̃ G : x 7→ 1−
log(2n − n/2)
n=2

˜ − due to the prime number the-

and one could show that C̃G ∼ C̃ G
orem, once again. We can also show that if we indeed have such a
L < 0, we get that
˜ (x) − C̃
∃ a > 0, ∃ c > 0, ∀ x > c, 1 > C̃ ˜ (a) > 0
G G

which means that if x is sufficiently large (bigger than a, for instance),

there is probably no counterexample. Hence, L < 0 would predict that
even if there are counterexamples, there would be a finite number of
them. If a ≤ 4×1018 , we could also predict that there is no such coun-
terexample, and we would have true weak evidence for Goldbach’s.

2.1 Suggestion
We could try to find two functions Lπ ≥ 0 and Uπ ≥ 0 such that
Lπ (x) ≤ π(x) and Uπ (x) ≥ π(x) for all x ∈ X ⊆ 2N such that
XY
(1 + Uπ (x) − L (x − p))
x∈X p∈P

is finite, where P ⊆ P. This would give us a good upper bound of the

number of counterexamples in the set X, and if X is an infinite set, we
would have proven there are an infinite amount of even numbers can
be broke down as a sum of two primes, which is a weaker conjecture
than Goldbach’s, but would surely be a great improvement.