Tuesday, November 12, 2019

elementary number theory - Proving that there are infinitely many primes with remainder of 2 when divided by 3




I need to prove that there are infinitely many primes with remainder of 2 when divided by 3. I started out similarly to Euclid's classic proof of an infinite number of prime numbers:



Suppose there is only a finite set of prime numbers with remainder of 2 when divided by 3, then we can write their product as:



P=q1q2qr,for some integer r,= (3q1+2)(3q2+2)(3qr+2), for integers qr.



This is where I am stuck. I do not know how to get to a similar contradiction as Euclid did when he considered P+1 and how the qi's could not divide P+1 since they divided P. (If they divided P+1 then they would divide P and 1, where dividing 1 is the contradiction). Any ideas on how I can get to a similar contradiction?



Origin — Elementary Number Theory — Jones — p28 — Exercise 2.6



Answer



Let q1,q2,,qn be odd primes of the form 3k+2. Consider the number N, where
N=3q1q2qn+2.
It is clear that none of the qi divides N, and that 3 does not divide N.



Since N is odd and greater than 1, it is a product of one or more odd primes. We will show that at least one of these primes is of the form 3k+2.



The prime divisors of N cannot be all of the shape 3k+1. For the product of any number of (not necessarily distinct) primes of the form 3k+1 is itself of the form 3k+1. But N is not of the form 3k+1. So some prime p of the form 3k+2 divides N. We already saw that p cannot be one of q,,qn. It follows that given any collection {q1,,qn} of primes of the form 3k+2, there is a prime p of the same form which is not in the collection. Thus the number of primes of the form 3k+2 cannot be finite.


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