Are there are infinitely many integers $n$ such that $x^2 +ny^2$ represents infinitely many primes

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The question is

Are there infinitely many integers $n$ such that $x^2 + ny^2$ represents infinitely many primes?

It is known that (Introductory Algebraic Number Theory by S.Alaca and K.Williams)

If $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt d]$ is a principal ideal domain for some squarefree integer $d$ and $q$ be an odd prime such that $$(d\mid q) =1 $$ Then there exist integers $u$ and $v$ such that $$q = \mid u^2 – dv^2 \mid $$

Here $(.|.)$ is Legendre's symbol.

I think there is a conjecture that there are infinitely many squarefree positive integers $d$ such that $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt d]$ is a PID. If this conjecture is true then there will be infinitely many integers $n$ such that $x^2 + ny^2$ represents infinitely many primes using the above theorem.

Is there a simple criterion other than the above conjecture which I am not seeing? It is sufficient even if you provide the references.

Best Answer

A theorem due to Dirichlet (completely proved only later, for example by Weber here) states that every primitive binary quadratic form represents infinitely many primes. The proof is much simpler than the theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions and uses the fact that $(s-1) \zeta_K(s)$ has a nonzero limit as $s \to 1$.

The result can also be deduced from the known fact that each ideal class contains infinitely many prime ideals.

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