On the Waring-Goldbach problem with almost equal summands

Abstract

We use transference principle to show that whenever $s$ is suitably large depending on $k \geq 2$, every sufficiently large natural number $n$ satisfying some congruence conditions can be written in the form $n = p_1^k + \dots + p_s^k$, where $p_1, \dots, p_s \in [x-x^\theta, x + x^\theta]$ are primes, $x = (n/s)^{1/k}$ and $\theta = 0.525 + \epsilon$. We also improve known results for $\theta$ when $k \geq 2$ and $s \geq k^2 + k + 1$. For example when $k \geq 4$ and $s \geq k^2 + k + 1$ we have $\theta = 0.55 + \epsilon$. All previously known results on the problem had $\theta > 3/4$.