The Poisson Tail Conjecture for primes in short intervals

Abstract

In 1976, Gallagher showed that, conditional on the Hardy--Littlewood conjectures, the number of primes below $x$ in a randomly chosen short interval of length $\lambda \log x$ asymptotically follows a Poisson distribution with mean $\lambda$. Correspondingly, the normalized gaps between consecutive primes follow an exponential distribution, provided that the scaling parameter $\lambda$ is fixed. We investigate the validity and limitations of the associated folklore Poisson Tail Conjecture as $\lambda$ is allowed to grow. For slowly growing $\lambda$, and conditional on a strong variant of the Hardy--Littlewood conjectures, we establish asymptotics showing that the local counting statistics agree with these predictions. Furthermore, we identify the scale of the phase transition and establish the breakdown of these distributions for larger $\lambda$. The proof relies on a novel combination of extremal interval sieve estimates and concentration inequalities from probability.

arXiv comment31 pages. Substantially revised version. Several arguments have been corrected and clarified. The breakdown result has been strengthened to reach the $\sqrt{2}$-scale, and additional proof details have been included