Furstenberg's proof of the infinitude of primes

Last updated

In mathematics, particularly in number theory, Hillel Furstenberg's proof of the infinitude of primes is a topological proof that the integers contain infinitely many prime numbers. When examined closely, the proof is less a statement about topology than a statement about certain properties of arithmetic sequences. [1] [2] Unlike Euclid's classical proof, Furstenberg's proof is a proof by contradiction. The proof was published in 1955 in the American Mathematical Monthly while he was still an undergraduate student at Yeshiva University.

Contents

Furstenberg's proof

Define a topology on the integers , called the evenly spaced integer topology, by declaring a subset U   to be an open set if and only if it is a union of arithmetic sequences S(a,b) for a  0, or is empty (which can be seen as a nullary union (empty union) of arithmetic sequences), where

Equivalently, U is open if and only if for every x in U there is some non-zero integer a such that S(a,x)  U. The axioms for a topology are easily verified:

This topology has two notable properties:

  1. Since any non-empty open set contains an infinite sequence, a finite non-empty set cannot be open; put another way, the complement of a finite non-empty set cannot be a closed set.
  2. The basis sets S(a,b) are both open and closed: they are open by definition, and we can write S(a,b) as the complement of an open set as follows:

The only integers that are not integer multiples of prime numbers are 1 and +1, i.e.

Now, by the first topological property, the set on the left-hand side cannot be closed. On the other hand, by the second topological property, the sets S(p,0) are closed. So, if there were only finitely many prime numbers, then the set on the right-hand side would be a finite union of closed sets, and hence closed. This would be a contradiction, so there must be infinitely many prime numbers.

Topological properties

The evenly spaced integer topology on is the topology induced by the inclusion , where is the profinite integer ring with its profinite topology.

It is homeomorphic to the rational numbers with the subspace topology inherited from the real line, [3] which makes it clear that any finite subset of it, such as , cannot be open.

Notes

  1. Mercer, Idris D. (2009). "On Furstenberg's Proof of the Infinitude of Primes" (PDF). American Mathematical Monthly. 116 (4): 355–356. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.559.9528 . doi:10.4169/193009709X470218.
  2. Clark, Pete L. (2017). "The Euclidean Criterion for Irreducibles". The American Mathematical Monthly. 124 (3): 198–216. doi:10.4169/amer.math.monthly.124.3.198. ISSN   0002-9890. JSTOR   10.4169/amer.math.monthly.124.3.198. S2CID   92986609. See discussion immediately prior to Lemma 3.2 or see Section 3.5.
  3. Broughan, Kevin A. (August 2003). "Adic Topologies for the Rational Integers". Canadian Journal of Mathematics. 55 (4): 711–723. doi: 10.4153/CJM-2003-030-3 . ISSN   0008-414X. S2CID   121286344.

Related Research Articles

In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between vectors and is complete in the sense that a Cauchy sequence of vectors always converges to a well-defined limit that is within the space.

In mathematics, a set is countable if either it is finite or it can be made in one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Equivalently, a set is countable if there exists an injective function from it into the natural numbers; this means that each element in the set may be associated to a unique natural number, or that the elements of the set can be counted one at a time, although the counting may never finish due to an infinite number of elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compact space</span> Type of mathematical space

In mathematics, specifically general topology, compactness is a property that seeks to generalize the notion of a closed and bounded subset of Euclidean space. The idea is that a compact space has no "punctures" or "missing endpoints", i.e., it includes all limiting values of points. For example, the open interval (0,1) would not be compact because it excludes the limiting values of 0 and 1, whereas the closed interval [0,1] would be compact. Similarly, the space of rational numbers is not compact, because it has infinitely many "punctures" corresponding to the irrational numbers, and the space of real numbers is not compact either, because it excludes the two limiting values and . However, the extended real number linewould be compact, since it contains both infinities. There are many ways to make this heuristic notion precise. These ways usually agree in a metric space, but may not be equivalent in other topological spaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sequence</span> Finite or infinite ordered list of elements

In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members. The number of elements is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in a sequence, and unlike a set, the order does matter. Formally, a sequence can be defined as a function from natural numbers to the elements at each position. The notion of a sequence can be generalized to an indexed family, defined as a function from an arbitrary index set.

In mathematics, a topological space is, roughly speaking, a geometrical space in which closeness is defined but cannot necessarily be measured by a numeric distance. More specifically, a topological space is a set whose elements are called points, along with an additional structure called a topology, which can be defined as a set of neighbourhoods for each point that satisfy some axioms formalizing the concept of closeness. There are several equivalent definitions of a topology, the most commonly used of which is the definition through open sets, which is easier than the others to manipulate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open set</span> Basic subset of a topological space

In mathematics, an open set is a generalization of an open interval in the real line.

In mathematics, a topological vector space is one of the basic structures investigated in functional analysis. A topological vector space is a vector space that is also a topological space with the property that the vector space operations are also continuous functions. Such a topology is called a vector topology and every topological vector space has a uniform topological structure, allowing a notion of uniform convergence and completeness. Some authors also require that the space is a Hausdorff space. One of the most widely studied categories of TVSs are locally convex topological vector spaces. This article focuses on TVSs that are not necessarily locally convex. Other well-known examples of TVSs include Banach spaces, Hilbert spaces and Sobolev spaces.

In mathematics, a real interval is the set of all real numbers lying between two fixed endpoints with no "gaps". Each endpoint is either a real number or positive or negative infinity, indicating the interval extends without a bound. A real interval can contain neither endpoint, either endpoint, or both endpoints, excluding any endpoint which is infinite.

In real analysis the Heine–Borel theorem, named after Eduard Heine and Émile Borel, states:

In functional analysis and related areas of mathematics, Fréchet spaces, named after Maurice Fréchet, are special topological vector spaces. They are generalizations of Banach spaces. All Banach and Hilbert spaces are Fréchet spaces. Spaces of infinitely differentiable functions are typical examples of Fréchet spaces, many of which are typically not Banach spaces.

In general topology, a branch of mathematics, a non-empty family A of subsets of a set is said to have the finite intersection property (FIP) if the intersection over any finite subcollection of is non-empty. It has the strong finite intersection property (SFIP) if the intersection over any finite subcollection of is infinite. Sets with the finite intersection property are also called centered systems and filter subbases.

In set theory, the Baire space is the set of all infinite sequences of natural numbers with a certain topology, called the product topology. This space is commonly used in descriptive set theory, to the extent that its elements are often called "reals". It is denoted by , or ωω, or by the symbol or sometimes by ωω.

In mathematics, the cylinder sets form a basis of the product topology on a product of sets; they are also a generating family of the cylinder σ-algebra.

Euclid's theorem is a fundamental statement in number theory that asserts that there are infinitely many prime numbers. It was first proven by Euclid in his work Elements. There are several proofs of the theorem.

In mathematics, a topological space is said to be limit point compact or weakly countably compact if every infinite subset of has a limit point in This property generalizes a property of compact spaces. In a metric space, limit point compactness, compactness, and sequential compactness are all equivalent. For general topological spaces, however, these three notions of compactness are not equivalent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Real number</span> Number representing a continuous quantity

In mathematics, a real number is a number that can be used to measure a continuous one-dimensional quantity such as a distance, duration or temperature. Here, continuous means that pairs of values can have arbitrarily small differences. Every real number can be almost uniquely represented by an infinite decimal expansion.

In topology, the pasting or gluing lemma, and sometimes the gluing rule, is an important result which says that two continuous functions can be "glued together" to create another continuous function. The lemma is implicit in the use of piecewise functions. For example, in the book Topology and Groupoids, where the condition given for the statement below is that and

In the field of topology, a Fréchet–Urysohn space is a topological space with the property that for every subset the closure of in is identical to the sequential closure of in Fréchet–Urysohn spaces are a special type of sequential space.

In functional analysis and related areas of mathematics, a metrizable topological vector space (TVS) is a TVS whose topology is induced by a metric. An LM-space is an inductive limit of a sequence of locally convex metrizable TVS.

In general topology and number theory, branches of mathematics, one can define various topologies on the set of integers or the set of positive integers by taking as a base a suitable collection of arithmetic progressions, sequences of the form or The open sets will then be unions of arithmetic progressions in the collection. Three examples are the Furstenberg topology on , and the Golomb topology and the Kirch topology on . Precise definitions are given below.

References