On the average value of

Abstract

AbstractWe prove that the Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the condition $\int _{2}^x\left (\pi (t)-\operatorname {\textrm {li}}(t)\right )\textrm {d}t<0$ for all $x>2$ . Here, $\pi (t)$ is the prime-counting function and $\operatorname {\textrm {li}}(t)$ is the logarithmic integral. This makes explicit a claim of Pintz. Moreover, we prove an analogous result for the Chebyshev function $\theta (t)$ and discuss the extent to which one can make related claims unconditionally.