Positive density for Sun's $2^k+m$ conjecture

TL;DR

This paper proves that a positive proportion of natural numbers can be expressed as n = k + m with 2^k + m prime, confirming Sun's conjecture holds for a positive density of integers.

Contribution

The authors establish an unconditional positive density result for Sun's conjecture and analyze the limitations of their method under a prime pairs conjecture.

Findings

Density of such numbers is at least 0.0734

Method's upper bound under conjecture is approximately 0.5906

Limitations of the approach are discussed

Abstract

In 2013, Zhi-Wei Sun proposed a Romanov-type conjecture stating that every integer $n > 1$ can be written as $n = k + m$ with $k, m \ge 1$ such that $2^k + m$ is a prime. In this paper, we unconditionally prove that the natural numbers satisfying this property have a positive density. We compute this density to be at least $0.0734$. We also discuss the limitations of our method. Under a uniform Hardy-Littlewood prime pairs conjecture, we show that the lower bound of density obtained by this method cannot exceed $1/(\log 2 + 1) \approx 0.5906$.