A formally verified proof of the prime number theorem

  • Authors:
  • Jeremy Avigad;Kevin Donnelly;David Gray;Paul Raff

  • Affiliations:
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Boston University;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Rutgers University

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL)
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The prime number theorem, established by Hadamard and de la Vallée Poussin independently in 1896, asserts that the density of primes in the positive integers is asymptotic to 1/ln x. Whereas their proofs made serious use of the methods of complex analysis, elementary proofs were provided by Selberg and Erdös in 1948. We describe a formally verified version of Selberg's proof, obtained using the Isabelle proof assistant.