Statistical and other properties of Riemann zeros based on an explicit equation for the $n$-th zero on the critical line

Abstract

We show that there are an infinite number of Riemann zeros on the critical line, enumerated by the positive integers $n=1,2,\dotsc$, whose ordinates can be obtained as the solution of a new transcendental equation that depends only on $n$. Under weak assumptions, we show that the number of such zeros already saturates the counting formula for the numbers of zeros on the entire critical strip. These results thus constitute a concrete proposal toward verifying the Riemann hypothesis. We perform numerical analyses of the exact equation, and its asymptotic limit of large ordinate. The starting point is an explicit analytical formula for an approximate solution to the exact equation in terms of the Lambert $W$ function. In this way, we neither have to use Gram points or deal with violations of Gram's law. Our numerical approach thus constitutes a novel method to compute the zeros. Employing these numerical solutions, we verify that solutions of the asymptotic version are accurate enough to confirm Montgomery's and Odlyzko's pair correlation conjectures and also to reconstruct the prime number counting function.