Trending in Number Theory
The Riemann Hypothesis: Past, Present and a Letter Through Time
This paper, commissioned as a survey of the Riemann Hypothesis, provides a comprehensive overview of 165 years of mathematical approaches to this fundamental problem, while introducing a new perspective that emerged during its preparation. The paper begins with a detailed description of what we know about the Riemann zeta function and its zeros, followed by an extensive survey of mathematical theories developed in pursuit of RH -- from classical analytic approaches to modern geometric and physical methods. We also discuss several equivalent formulations of the hypothesis. Within this survey framework, we present an original contribution in the form of a "Letter to Riemann," using only mathematics available in his time. This letter reveals a method inspired by Riemann's own approach to the conformal mapping theorem: by extremizing a quadratic form (restriction of Weil's quadratic form in modern language), we obtain remarkable approximations to the zeros of zeta. Using only primes less than 13, this optimization procedure yields approximations to the first 50 zeros with accuracies ranging from $2.6 \times 10^{-55}$ to $10^{-3}$. Moreover we prove a general result that these approximating values lie exactly on the critical line. Following the letter, we explain the underlying mathematics in modern terms, including the description of a deep connection of the Weil quadratic form with the world of information theory. The final sections develop a geometric perspective using trace formulas, outlining a potential proof strategy based on establishing convergence of zeros from finite to infinite Euler products. While completing the commissioned survey, these new results suggest a promising direction for future research on Riemann's conjecture.
2602.04022
Feb 2026Number Theory
2601.07421Resolution of Erdős Problem #728: a writeup of Aristotle's Lean proof
We provide a writeup of a resolution of Erdős Problem #728; this is the first Erdos problem (a problem proposed by Paul Erdős which has been collected in the Erdos Problems website) regarded as fully resolved autonomously by an AI system. The system in question is a combination of GPT-5.2 Pro by OpenAI and Aristotle by Harmonic, operated by Kevin Barreto. The final result of the system is a formal proof written in Lean, which we translate to informal mathematics in the present writeup for wider accessibility. The proved result is as follows. We show a logarithmic-gap phenomenon regarding factorial divisibility: For any constants $0<C_1<C_2$ there exist infinitely many triples $(a,b,n)\in\mathbb N^3$ such that \[ a!\,b!\mid n!\,(a+b-n)!\qquad\text{and}\qquad C_1\log n < a+b-n < C_2\log n. \] The argument reduces this to a binomial divisibility $\binom{m+k}{k}\mid\binom{2m}{m}$ and studies it prime-by-prime. By Kummer's theorem, $ν_p\binom{2m}{m}$ translates into a carry count for doubling $m$ in base $p$. We then employ a counting argument to find, in each scale $[M,2M]$, an integer $m$ whose base-$p$ expansions simultaneously force many carries when doubling $m$, for every prime $p\le 2k$, while avoiding the rare event that one of $m+1,\dots,m+k$ is divisible by an unusually high power of $p$. These "carry-rich but spike-free" choices of $m$ force the needed $p$-adic inequalities and the divisibility. The overall strategy is similar to results regarding divisors of $\binom{2n}{n}$ studied earlier by Erdős and by Pomerance.
2601.07421
Jan 2026Number Theory
