Wiki
Wiki

Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

Updated


Champagne, Lê, Liu and Wooley proved (Theorem 1.1 of the paper on the 2024 card) that there is an irrational α\alpha, in fact a transcendental one, for which the sequence {αpn}\{\alpha p_n\} over the primes is not well-distributed in the sense of Hlawka and Petersen. The number is α=∑k2−nk\alpha=\sum_k 2^{-n_k} with exponents chosen through Shiu's theorem on long strings of consecutive primes in one residue class, and the failure of well-distribution is read off from the Petersen exponential-sum criterion; the argument gives many such α\alpha.

Covers. The existence of one irrational (indeed transcendental) α\alpha for which {αpn}\{\alpha p_n\} is not well-distributed, the statement Erdős claimed in [Er64b] and retracted in [Er85e]; for a rational α\alpha the sequence takes finitely many values and the failure is trivial. It does not cover the question of Problem 997 as asked, which concerns every α\alpha; that full question is settled by Alexeev, Putterman, Sawhney, Sellke and Valiant 2026.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the result rests on the cited paper alone.

Acceptance. The result is refereed: J. Champagne, T. H. Lê, Y.-R. Liu and T. D. Wooley, Well-distribution modulo one and the primes, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 153 (2025), no. 12, 5069–5074, published electronically 2025-10-23. The site's commentary mentions the paper as the one that established the existence of such an α\alpha, but its label PROVED (LEAN) settles the problem through the later full result, so the curator's remark is commentary on this partial result and not listed as reviewed. The formal-conjectures statement file ErdosProblems/997.lean (the revision of 2026-09-18, pinned in the link) states this existence statement as the variant erdos_997.variants.irrational, marked research solved with a sorry body; a statement file is not acceptance evidence.