Using elementary methods to prove infinitely many primes mod n

elementary-number-theoryprime numbers

I was reading an elementary number theory text looking to enhance my knowledge and I came across the relatively simple task of proving there existed infinitely many primes of the form $4k-1$ (of course, without Dirichlet). My very elementary proof is as follows:

Assume there exist only $n$ finitely many such primes: then let $m=4(p_1p_2\cdots p_n)-1$. This is a (odd) number of the form $4k-1$ and thus must have factors of form $4k-1$, for otherwise the number would be of the form $4k+1$.

Is there such a simple generalization of this proof? I can see that this proof does not work for some, such as the $4k+1$ case found here. For instance, please provide a similar proof that there exists infinitely many primes of the form $15k+4$ (randomly chosen numbers). Thanks.

Best Answer

This question has been asked many times. These are called Euclidean proofs of special cases of Dirichlet's theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions. Keith Conrad has a nice article on it, which includes a complete characterization of when such a proof exists. Thanks to the characterization, since $$4^2\equiv 1\pmod{15},$$ there exists such a proof in the case that you requested, though I don't know what explicit polynomial would be used.

I wrote about this general problem in this post as well.

By the way, a Euclidean proof does exist in the $1\pmod 4$ case. You can use the polynomial $n^2+1,$ but you need to include $2$ in the product of the presumed finite list of prime to get the contradiction.

EDIT: I found a polynomial for $15k+4$ with proof in pages 92-94 of Problems in Algebraic Number Theory. It is $$n^4-n^3+2n^2+n+1.$$ The brother of one of the authors recommended the book to me years ago, but it never suited me... finally found use for it.