mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

, a

prime number A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a Product (mathematics), product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime ...

''p'' is called a Chen prime if ''p'' + 2 is either a prime or a product of two primes (also called a semiprime). The

even number In mathematics, parity is the property of an integer of whether it is even or odd. An integer is even if it is divisible by 2, and odd if it is not.. For example, −4, 0, and 82 are even numbers, while −3, 5, 23, and 69 are odd numbers. The ...

2''p'' + 2 therefore satisfies

Chen's theorem In number theory, Chen's theorem states that every sufficiently large parity (mathematics), even number can be written as the sum of either two prime number, primes, or a prime and a semiprime (the product of two primes). It is a weakened form o ...

. The Chen primes are named after Chen Jingrun, who proved in 1966 that there are infinitely many such primes. This result would also follow from the truth of the

twin prime conjecture A twin prime is a prime number that is either 2 less or 2 more than another prime number—for example, either member of the twin prime pair or In other words, a twin prime is a prime that has a prime gap of two. Sometimes the term ''twin prime'' ...

as the lower member of a pair of

twin prime A twin prime is a prime number that is either 2 less or 2 more than another prime number—for example, either member of the twin prime pair or In other words, a twin prime is a prime that has a prime gap of two. Sometimes the term ''twin prime' ...

s is by definition a Chen prime. The first few Chen primes are : 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 47, 53, 59, 67, 71, 83, 89, 101, … . The first few Chen primes that are not the lower member of a pair of twin primes are :2, 7, 13, 19, 23, 31, 37, 47, 53, 67, 83, 89, 109, 113, 127, ... . The first few non-Chen primes are :43, 61, 73, 79, 97, 103, 151, 163, 173, 193, 223, 229, 241, … . All of the supersingular primes are Chen primes. Rudolf Ondrejka discovered the following 3 × 3

magic square In mathematics, especially History of mathematics, historical and recreational mathematics, a square array of numbers, usually positive integers, is called a magic square if the sums of the numbers in each row, each column, and both main diago ...

of nine Chen primes: , the largest known Chen prime is × 2 − 1, with decimal digits. The sum of the reciprocals of Chen primes converges.

Further results

Chen also proved the following generalization: For any even

integer An integer is the number zero (0), a positive natural number (1, 2, 3, ...), or the negation of a positive natural number (−1, −2, −3, ...). The negations or additive inverses of the positive natural numbers are referred to as negative in ...

''h'', there exist infinitely many primes ''p'' such that ''p'' + ''h'' is either a prime or a

semiprime In mathematics, a semiprime is a natural number that is the product of exactly two prime numbers. The two primes in the product may equal each other, so the semiprimes include the squares of prime numbers. Because there are infinitely many prime n ...

. Ben Green and Terence Tao showed that the Chen primes contain infinitely many

arithmetic progression An arithmetic progression or arithmetic sequence is a sequence of numbers such that the difference from any succeeding term to its preceding term remains constant throughout the sequence. The constant difference is called common difference of that ...

s of length 3. Binbin Zhou generalized this result by showing that the Chen primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions.Binbin Zhou
The Chen primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions
''

Acta Arithmetica ''Acta Arithmetica'' is a scientific journal of mathematics publishing papers on number theory. It was established in 1935 by Salomon Lubelski and Arnold Walfisz. The journal is published by the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sc ...

'' 138:4 (2009), pp. 301–315.

References

External links

The Prime Pages
* * * {{Prime number classes Classes of prime numbers 1966 in science