Phase transition in a stochastic prime number generator

Abstract

We introduce a stochastic algorithm that acts as a prime number generator. The dynamics of such algorithm gives rise to a continuous phase transition which separates a phase where the algorithm is able to reduce a whole set of integers into primes and a phase where the system reaches a frozen state with low prime density. We present both numerical simulations and an analytical approach in terms of an annealed approximation, by means of which the data are collapsed. A critical slowing down phenomenon is also outlined.

accepted in PRE (Rapid Comm.)

References in corpus (1)

• Integer Networks

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Number theoretic example of scale-free topology inducing self-organized criticality