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Source. Lemma 2.1 (p. 4) and Theorem 2.2 (p. 5), Section 2, of Nathan McNew, The convex hull of the prime number graph, in: Irregularities in the Distribution of Prime Numbers, Springer, Cham (2018), 125--141, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92777-0_7, cited at the page numbers 1--15 of the author's preprint named on the source card.

Statement

Setting (pp. 1--3). The prime number graph is the set of points (n,pn)(n,p_n), pnp_n the nnth prime. A convex prime is a prime pnp_n for which (n,pn)(n,p_n) is a vertex of the convex hull of this graph; c1<c2<⋯c_1<c_2<\cdots are the indices of the convex primes, so the convex primes are pc1<pc2<⋯p_{c_1}<p_{c_2}<\cdots.

Lemma 2.1 (p. 4). If (m,pm)(m,p_m) is any point on the boundary of the convex hull of the prime number graph, the segment of the hull boundary following it has slope log⁡m+log⁡log⁡m+o(1)\log m+\log\log m+o(1) as m→∞m\to\infty.

Theorem 2.2 (p. 5). The number of convex primes up to xx is

O(x2/3log⁡2/3x).O\Bigl(\frac{x^{2/3}}{\log^{2/3}x}\Bigr).

The paper notes (p. 5) that this proves Tutaj's Conjecture 1.2 (p. 3), that ∑i≥11/pci\sum_{i\ge1}1/p_{c_i} converges. It also notes (p. 3) that the bound is O(π(x)2/3)O(\pi(x)^{2/3}), which improves the earlier o(x/log⁡x)o(x/\log x) that Pomerance drew from a result of Erdős and Prachar.

Read depth. Claims checked: Lemma 2.1 and Theorem 2.2 were read clause by clause on the page images of the preprint; the proofs were read but not checked, and nothing here is independently reviewed.

Proof pointer

p. 5. Count the convex primes in (12x,x](\tfrac12x,x]. The slopes between consecutive convex primes are strictly increasing rationals (pcj+1−pcj)/(cj+1−cj)(p_{c_{j+1}}-p_{c_j})/(c_{j+1}-c_j), and by Lemma 2.1 they lie in an interval of length log⁡2+o(1)\log2+o(1), so for each index gap kk there are O(k)O(k) possible slopes. Consecutive convex primes with index gap at most KK therefore number O(K2)O(K^2), those with gap above KK number O(x/(Klog⁡x))O(x/(K\log x)), and K=(x/log⁡x)1/3K=(x/\log x)^{1/3} balances the two; then sum dyadically. The paper also records (p. 5) that the bound follows from Andrews's O(A1/3)O(A^{1/3}) bound on the vertices of a convex lattice region of area AA.

Dependencies

Lemma 2.1 (above) and the prime number theorem.

Bears on

No Erdős problem directly. The convex primes are a subset of the midpoint convex primes, the primes with Mn>0M_n>0 in the notation of equation (23); an upper bound on how many convex primes there are says nothing about how large MnM_n can be, which is what Problem 454 asks.