On the Sum of the Square of a Prime and a Square-Free Number

Abstract

We prove that every integer $n \geq 10$ such that $n \not\equiv 1 \text{mod} 4$ can be written as the sum of the square of a prime and a square-free number. This makes explicit a theorem of Erd\H{o}s that every sufficiently large integer of this type may be written in such a way. Our proof requires us to construct new explicit results for primes in arithmetic progressions. As such, we use the second author's numerical computation regarding GRH to extend the explicit bounds of Ramar\'e-Rumely.