2026/07/29 by Lasse Grimmelt, Gautami Bhowmik
Mathematics · #math.NT
arxiv created 2026/07/29 · arxiv updated 2026/07/31
We study the estimates for the number of exceptions to the representation of integers as the sum of at most two prime numbers. Most of this article is a survey that gives an overview of existing results. We begin with the legendary Hardy-Littlewood circle method and show how it paved the way to a power saving by Montgomery-Vaughan in 1975 and Pintz in 2018. We conclude with a new result that is a fully explicit formula for the major arcs. Another new observation is the non-existence of exceptional zeros under a sparse version of the Hardy-Littlewood conjecture. The survey part of this article aims to be accessible to an audience that has not encountered these techniques before.