An Introduction to Sieve Methods and Their Applications

Sieve theory has a rich and romantic history. The ancient question of whether there exist infinitely many twin primes (primes p such that p+2 is also prime), and Goldbach’s conjecture that every even number can be written as the sum of two prime numbers, have been two of the problems that have inspired the development of the theory. This book provides a motivated introduction to sieve theory. Rather than focus on technical details which can obscure the beauty of the theory, the authors focus on examples and applications, developing the theory in parallel. The text can be used for a senior level undergraduate course or an introductory graduate course in analytic number theory, and non-experts can gain a quick introduction to the techniques of the subject.