Monday, 21 December 2015

Bringing Number and Graph Theory Together: A Conjecture on Prime Numbers

Some MOers have been skeptic whether something like natural number graphs can be defined coherently such that every finite graph is isomorphic to such a graph. (See my previous questions [1], [2], [3], [4])



Without attempting to give a general definition of natural number graphs, I invite you to consider the following




DEFINITION



A natural number $d$ may be called demi-prime
iff there is a prime number $p$ such
that $d = (p+1)/2$. The demi-primes' distribution is exactly
like the primes, only shrinked by the
factor $2$:



$$2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 27, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 40, 42, 45, 49, ...$$



Let D($k,n$) be the set which consists
of the $k$-th up to the $(k+n-1)$-th
demi-prime number.




After some - mildly exhaustive - calculations I feel quite confident to make the following




CONJECTURE



For every finite graph $G$ there is a $k$ and a bijection $d$ from the vertex set
$V(G)$ to D($k,|G|$) such that $x,y$ are adjacent if and only if $d(x),d(y)$ are coprime.




I managed to show this rigorously for all graphs of order $nleq $ 5 by brut force calculation, having to take into account all (demi-)primes $d$ up to the 1,265,487th one for graphs of order 5. For graphs of order 4, the first 1,233 primes did suffice, for graphs of order 3 the first 18 ones.



Looking at some generated statistics for $n leq$ 9 reveals interesting facts(1)(2), correlations, and lack of correlations, and let it seem probable (at least to me) that the above conjecture also holds for graphs of order $n >$ 5.



Having boiled down my initial intuition to a concrete predicate, I would like to pose the following




QUESTION



Has anyone a clue how to prove or disprove the above conjecture?




My impression is that the question is about the randomness of prime numbers: Are they distributed and their corresponding demi-primes composed randomly enough to mimick – via D($k,n$) and coprimeness – all (random) graphs?




(1) E.g., there is one graph of order 5 - quite unimpressive in graph theoretic terms - that is very hard to find compared to all the others: it takes 1,265,487 primes to find this guy, opposed to only 21,239 primes for the second hardest one. (Lesson learned: Never stop searching too early!) It's – to whom it is of interest – $K_2 cup K_3$:



0 1 0 0 0
1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 1
0 0 1 0 1
0 0 1 1 0


(2)Added: This table shows the position of the smallest prime (among all primes) needed to mimick the named graphs of order $n$. All values not shown are greater than $approx 2,000,000$



order    |   3     4      5      6       7      8
-------------------------------------------------
empty | 14 45 89 89 89 3874
complete | 5 64 336 1040 10864 96515
path | 1 6 3063 21814
cycle | 5 112 21235 49957

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