[Math] What’s the fastest growing function known to contain infinitely many primes

elementary-number-theorynumber theoryprime numbersreference-request

I know that Dirichlet's Theorem says that for every $a,b\in\mathbb{N}$ with $\gcd(a,b)=1$ and $a\ge 1$ the function
\begin{align*}
f:\mathbb{N}&\to\mathbb{N}\\
n&\mapsto an+b
\end{align*}
evaluates to a prime number for infinitely many $n\in\mathbb{N}$. However, we don't know whether there are any quadratic polynomials containing infinitely many prime numbers. This made me wonder:

What is the fastest growing non-decreasing function $f:\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{N}$, for which $f(n)$ is computable in $O(\log n)$ and $\{f(n):n\in\mathbb{N}\}$ is known to contain infinitely many primes?

Best Answer

I'm sure this isn't fastest, but it's super-linear. It is known that for $k$ sufficiently large, there is always a prime between $k^3$ and $(k+1)^3$. Now consider the following function. If $n = 2^{2m+1}+j$, $0 \le j < 3 \cdot 2^{2m+1}$, then $f(n) = 2^{3m}+j$. Note that $2^{3m} + 3 \cdot 2^{2m+1} > (2^m+1)^3$ for $m \ge 1$. Thus for each sufficiently large $m$, there will always be $0 \le j < 3 \cdot 2^{2m+1}$ for which $f(2^{2m+1}+j)$ is prime.