Runs of Semiprimes

A little investigation has revealed that there are record runs of eight semiprimes that are each separated by one number or, to put it another way, the semiprimes form an arithmetic progression with a common difference of 2. In the range up to half a million, there are four groups of eight such semiprimes. All the numbers are odd because every fourth number is a multiple of 4 and so no such runs of eight even numbers are possible. The reason that the limit is eight semiprimes is that every ninth number is a multiple of 9. The groups are (permalink):

• 8129 ... 8143 (see Table 1)
• 237449 ... 237463 (see Table 2
• 401429 ... 401443 (see Table 3)
• 452639 ... 452653 (see Table 4)

The details are (permalink):

Table 1: permalink

Table 2: permalink

Table 3: permalink

Table 4: permalink

As I later discovered, these four numbers form the initial terms of OEIS A217222.

A217222    Initial terms of sets of 8 consecutive semiprimes with gap 2.

The initial terms are:

8129, 237449, 401429, 452639, 604487, 858179, 1471727, 1999937, 2376893, 2714987, 3111977, 3302039, 3869237, 4622087, 7813559, 9795449, 10587899, 10630739, 11389349, 14186387, 14924153, 15142547, 15757337, 18017687, 18271829, 19732979, 22715057, 25402907

Here are the OEIS comments:

• All terms == 11 (mod 18).
• Also all terms of sets of 8 consecutive semiprimes are odd, e.g., {8129, 8131, 8133, 8135, 8137, 8139, 8141, 8143} is the smallest set of 8 consecutive semiprimes.
• Note that in all cases "9th term" (in this case 8143+2=8145) is divisible by 9 and hence is not semiprime.
• Also note that all seven "intermediate" even integers (in this case {8130, 8132, 8134, 8136, 8138, 8140, 8142}) have at least three prime factors counting with multiplicity. Up to n = 40*10^9 there are 5570 terms of this sequence.

There is another sequence, of which OEIS A217222 is a subsequence, wherein an even semiprime is contained in the run of eight odd semiprimes. This is OEIS A082919.

A082919    Numbers k such that k, k+2, k+4, k+6, k+8, k+10, k+12 and k+14 are semiprimes.

The initial members of this sequence are (members of A217222 are shown in blue):

8129, 9983, 99443, 132077, 190937, 237449, 401429, 441677, 452639, 604487, 802199, 858179, 991289, 1471727, 1474607, 1963829, 1999937, 2376893, 2714987, 3111977, 3302039, 3869237, 4622087, 4738907, 6156137, 7813559, 8090759

Take 9983 as an example. There is still the run of eight odd semiprimes but, between 9985 and 9987, there is 9986 which is also a semiprime. In all the non-blue numbers above, there is only the one even semiprime in the range of 14 numbers, making for a total of nine semiprimes. See Table 5:

Table 5

Here are some of the OEIS comments for this sequence:

• All terms == 11 (mod 18). - Zak Seidov, Sep 27 2012
• There is at least one even semiprime between k and k+14 for 1812 of the first 10000 terms. - Donovan Johnson, Oct 01 2012
• All terms == {29,47,83} (mod 90). - Zak Seidov, Sep 13 2014
• Among the first 10000 terms, from all 80000 numbers a(n)+m, m=0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14, the only square is a(4637) + 2 = 23538003241 = 153421^2 (153421 is prime, of course). - Zak Seidov, Dec 22 2014