Short intervals containing a prescribed number of primes

Abstract

We prove that for every nonnegative integer $m$ there exists an $\varepsilon>0$ such that if $\lambda\in (0,\varepsilon]$ and $x$ is sufficiently large in terms of $m$, then the number of positive integers $n\leq x$ for which the interval $[n,n+\lambda\log n]$ contains exactly $m$ primes is at least a constant times $x/\log x.$ This improves a result of T. Freiberg, when $\lambda$ is small.