Generalising the Hardy-Littlewood Method for Primes

The Hardy-Littlewood method is a well-known technique in analytic number theory. Among its spectacular applications are Vinogradov's 1937 result that every sufficiently large odd number is a sum of three primes, and a related result of Chowla and Van der Corput giving an asymptotic for the number of 3-term progressions of primes, all less than N. This article surveys recent developments of the author and T. Tao, in which the Hardy-Littlewood method has been generalised to obtain, for example, an asymptotic for the number of 4-term arithmetic progressions of primes less than N.Comment: 26 pages, submitted to Proceedings of ICM 200

Linear correlations amongst numbers represented by positive definite binary quadratic forms

Given a positive definite binary quadratic form f, let r(n) = |{(x,y): f(x,y)=n}| denote its representation function. In this paper we study linear correlations of these functions. For example, if r_1, ..., r_k are representation functions, we obtain an asymptotic for sum_{n,d} r_1(n) r_2(n+d) ... r_k(n+ (k-1)d).Comment: 60 pages. Small correction

On Sums of Sets of Primes with Positive Relative Density

In this paper we show that if $A$ is a subset of the primes with positive relative density $\delta$, then $A+A$ must have positive upper density $C_1\delta e^{-C_2(\log(1/\delta))^{2/3}(\log\log(1/\delta))^{1/3}}$ in $\mathbb{N}$. Our argument applies the techniques developed by Green and Green-Tao used to find arithmetic progressions in the primes, in combination with a result on sums of subsets of the multiplicative subgroup of the integers modulo $M$.Comment: 21 pages, to appear in J. London Math. Soc., short remark added and typos fixe