Mersenne prime Mersenne prime In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form for some integer . They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th century. The exponents which give Mersenne primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, ... and the resulting Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287, 2147483647, ... . If is a composite number then so is . ( is divisible by both and .)
Prime number large threshold, is described by the prime number theorem, but no efficient formula for the formula_1-th prime is known. Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions, in its basic form, asserts that linear polynomials with relatively prime integers formula_34 and formula_35 take infinitely many prime values. Stronger forms of the theorem state that the sum of the reciprocals of these prime values diverges, and that different linear polynomials with the same formula_35 have approximately the same proportions of primes. Although conjectures have been formulated about the proportions of primes in higher-degree polynomials, they remain unproven, and it is unknown whether there exists