Dynamical generalizations of the prime number theorem and disjointness of additive and multiplicative semigroup actions

Abstract

We establish two ergodic theorems which have among their corollaries numerous classical results from multiplicative number theory, including the Prime Number Theorem, a theorem of Pillai-Selberg, a theorem of Erdős-Delange, the mean value theorem of Wirsing, and special cases of the mean value theorem of Halasz. By building on the ideas behind our ergodic results, we recast Sarnak's Mobius disjointness conjecture in a new dynamical framework. This naturally leads to an extension of Sarnak's conjecture which focuses on the disjointness of additive and multiplicative semigroup actions. We substantiate this extension by providing proofs of several special cases thereof.