Abstract

This paper presents a new probabilistic primality test. Upon termination the test outputs "composite" or "prime", along with a short proof of correctness, which can be verified in deterministic polynomial time. The test is different from the tests of Miller [M], Solovay-Strassen [SSI, and Rabin [R] in that its assertions of primality are certain, rather than being correct with high prob-ability or dependent on an unproven assumption. Thc test terminates in expected polynomial time on all but at most an exponentially vanishing fraction of the inputs of length k, for every k. This result implies: • There exist an infinite set of primes which can be recognized in expected polynomial time. • Large certified primes can be generated in expected polynomial time. Under a very plausible condition on the distribution of primes in "small" intervals, the proposed algorithm can be shown'to run in expected polynomial time on every input. This

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