A common combinatorial principle underlies Riemann's formula, the Chebyshev phenomenon, and other subtle effects in comparative prime number theory. I.
We develop an axiomatic formulation of the higher rank version of the classical Selberg sieve. This allows us to derive a simplified proof of the Zhang and Maynard-Tao result on bounded gaps between primes. We also apply the sieve to other subsequences of the primes and obtain bounded gaps in various settings.
We implement the Maynard-Tao method of detecting primes in tuples to investigate small gaps between primes in arithmetic progressions, with bounds that are uniform over a range of moduli.