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Are there infinitely many prime pairs with given even difference? Most mathematicians think so. Using a strong arithmetic hypothesis, Goldston, Pintz and Yildirim have recently shown that there are infinitely many pairs of primes differing by at most sixteen.There is extensive numerical support for the prime-pair conjecture (PPC) of Hardy and Littlewood [G.H. Hardy, J.E. Littlewood, Some problems of ‘partitio numerorum’. III: On the expression of a number as a sum of primes, Acta Math. 44 (1923) 1–70 (sec. 3)] on the asymptotic behavior of π2r(x), the number of prime pairs with p≤x. Assuming Riemann’s Hypothesis (RH), Montgomery and others have studied the pair-correlation of zeta’s complex zeros, indicating connections with the PPC. Using a Tauberian approach, the author shows that the PPC is equivalent to specific boundary behavior of a function involving zeta’s complex zeros. A certain hypothesis on equidistribution of prime pairs, or a speculative supplement to Montgomery’s work on pair-correlation, would imply that there is an abundance of prime pairs.

References: Cipra, B. 1998. A prime case of chaos. In What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 4. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society. (Available at http://www.ams.org/new-in-math/happening.html.) ______. 1996. Prime formula weds number theory and quantum physics. Science 274(Dec. 20):2014. Davis, P.J., and R. Hersch. 1981. The Mathematical Experience. New York: Viking Penguin. Katz, N.M., and P. Sarnak. 1999. Zeroes of zeta functions and symmetry. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 36(January):1. Peterson, I. 1995. Cavities of chaos. Science News 147(April 29):264. Richards, I. 1978. Number theory. In Mathematics Today: Twelve Informal Essays. L.A. Steen, ed. New York: Springer-Verlag. Peter Sarnak's lecture on random matrix models in number theory and quantum mechanics is available at http://www.msri.org/publications/video/fall98/mandm.html. Andrew Odlyzko's Web page at http://www.research.att.com/~amo/ features computations of the zeros of the zeta function.

The Riemann hypothesis was first proposed in 1859 by the German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866). It concerns the so-called zeta function, which encodes a great deal of information about the seemingly haphazard distribution of prime numbers among the integers (see The Mark of Zeta, June 19, 1999).

Random matrix theory has been a hot topic in number theory, particularly since the Rudnick and Sarnak landmark work on the spacing of consecutive zeros of L-functions. This highly accessible talk has a far more elementary flavour, focusing on eigenvalues of random integer matrices instead of the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble. For a fixed n, consider a random n×n integer matrix with entries bounded by the parameter k. I'll give a simple proof that such a matrix almost certainly has no rational eigenvalues (as k increases). Then we'll delve into more detail on the exact eigenvalue distribution of the 2×2 case. Along the way we'll rediscover a forgotten determinant identity and tackle some quadruple sums. This is joint work with Greg Martin.