Primes of the form $ax+by$ in certain intervals with small solutions

Abstract

Let $1<a<b$ be two relatively prime integers and $\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}$ the set of non-negative integers. For any non-negative integer $\ell$, denote by $g_{\ell,a,b}$ the largest integer $n$ such that the equation $$n=ax+by,\quad (x,y)\in\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}^{2} \quad (1)$$ has at most $\ell$ solutions. Let $\pi_{\ell,a,b}$ be the number of primes $p\leq g_{\ell,a,b}$ having at least $\ell+1$ solutions for (1) and $\pi(x)$ the number of primes not exceeding $x$. In this article, we prove that for a fixed integer $a\ge 3$ with $\gcd(a,b)=1$, $$ \pi_{\ell,a,b}=\left(\frac{a-2}{2(\ell a+a-1)}+o(1)\right)\pi\bigl(g_{\ell,a,b}\bigr)\quad(\text{as}~ b\to\infty). $$ For any non-negative $\ell$ and relatively prime integers $a,b$, satisfying $e^{\ell+1}\leq a<b$, we show that \begin{equation*} \pi_{\ell,a,b}>0.005\cdot \frac{1}{\ell+1}\frac{g_{\ell,a,b}}{\log g_{\ell,a,b}}. \end{equation*} Let $\pi_{\ell,a,b}^{*}$ be the number of primes $p\leq g_{\ell,a,b}$ having at most $\ell$ solutions for (1). For an integer $a\ge 3$ and a large sufficiently integer $b$ with $\gcd(a,b)=1$, we also prove that $$ \pi^{*}_{\ell,a,b}>\frac{(2\ell+1)a}{2(\ell a+a-1)}\frac{g_{\ell,a,b}}{\log g_{\ell,a,b}}. $$ Moreover, if $\ell<a<b$ with $\gcd(a,b)=1$, then we have \begin{equation*} \pi^{*}_{\ell,a,b}>\frac{\ell+0.02}{\ell+1}\frac{g_{\ell,a,b}}{\log g_{\ell,a,b}}. \end{equation*} These results generalize the previous ones of Chen and Zhu (2025), who established the results for the case $\ell=0$.