A222299 Number of different Gaussian primes in the Gaussian prime spiral beginning at the n-th positive real Gaussian prime (A002145).

8, 10, 172, 12, 168, 19, 19, 21, 21, 168, 14, 37, 37, 14, 18, 30, 68, 10, 10, 4, 10, 4, 29, 29, 32, 2484, 58, 30, 32, 2484, 76, 16, 10, 10, 18, 23, 23, 1861, 1861, 30, 34, 958, 126, 22, 10, 182, 10, 10, 74, 10, 112, 26, 48, 29, 29, 774, 13, 13, 26, 774, 18, 10

Offset: 1

Author

T. D. Noe, Feb 25 2013

Keywords

• nonn

Comments

The Gaussian prime spiral is described in the short note by O'Rourke and Wagon. It is not known if every iteration is a closed loop. See A222298 for the number of line segments between primes.

Examples

			The loop beginning with 31 is {31, 43, 43 - 8i, 37 - 8i, 37 - 2i, 45 - 2i, 45 - 8i, 43 - 8i, 43, 47, 47 - 2i, 45 - 2i, 45 + 2i, 47 + 2i, 47, 43, 43 + 8i, 45 + 8i, 45 + 2i, 37 + 2i, 37 + 8i, 43 + 8i, 43, 31, 31 + 4i, 41 + 4i, 41 - 4i, 31 - 4i, 31}. But only 19 are unique.
		

References

• Joseph O'Rourke and Stan Wagon, Gaussian prime spirals, Mathematics Magazine, vol. 86, no. 1 (2013), p. 14.

Links

• T. D. Noe, Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..1000

Programs

Mathematica

loop2[n_] := Module[{p = n, direction = 1}, lst = {n}; While[While[p = p + direction; ! PrimeQ[p, GaussianIntegers -> True]]; direction = direction*(-I); AppendTo[lst, p]; ! (p == n && direction == 1)]; Length[Union[lst]]]; cp = Select[Range[1000], PrimeQ[#, GaussianIntegers -> True] &]; Table[loop2[p], {p, cp}]