A note on zero-density approaches for the difference between consecutive primes

Abstract

In this note, we generalise two results on prime numbers in short intervals. The first result is Ingham's theorem which connects the zero-density estimates with short intervals where the prime number theorem holds, and the second result is due to Heath-Brown and Iwaniec, which derives the weighted zero-density estimates used for obtaining the lower bound for the number of primes in short intervals. The generalised versions of these results make the connections between the zero-free regions, zero-density estimates, and the primes in short intervals more transparent. As an example, the generalisation of Ingham's theorem implies that, under the Density Hypothesis, the prime number theorem holds in $[x - \sqrt{x}\exp(\log^{2/3+\varepsilon}x), x]$, which refines upon the classic interval $[x - x^{1/2+ \varepsilon}, x]$.