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In this final lecture in the Marker lecture series, I discuss the recent work of Bourgain, Gamburd, and Sarnak on how arithmetic combinatorics and expander graphs were used to sieve for almost primes in various algebraic sets.

In the third Marker lecture, I would like to discuss the recent progress, particularly by Goldston, Pintz, and Yıldırım, on finding small gaps $p_{n+1}-p_n$ between consecutive primes.  (See also the surveys by Goldston-Pintz-Yıldırım, by Green, and by Soundararajan on the subject; the material here is based to some extent on these prior surveys.)

This week I am at Penn State University, giving this year’s Marker lectures.  My chosen theme for my four lectures here is “recent developments in additive prime number theory”.  My first lecture, “Long arithmetic progressions in primes”, is similar to my AMS lecture on the same topic and so I am not reposting it here.  The second lecture, the notes for which begin after the fold, is on “Linear equations in primes”.  These two lectures focus primarily on work of myself and Ben Green.  The third and fourth lectures, entitled “Small gaps between primes” and “Sieving for almost primes and expander graphs”, will instead be focused on the work of Goldston-Yildirim-Pintz and Bourgain-Gamburd-Sarnak respectively.
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