Higher order uniformity of the primes and cancellation of the Möbius function in shorter intervals

Abstract: We prove the Gowers uniformity of the von Mangoldt function minus its Cramér model in all short intervals $[X,X+X<sup>{3/5+\varepsilon}]$, improving on the work of the first and fourth authors with Shao and Tao, where the exponent was $5/8$. This also implies a local-to-global theorem for linear equations in primes in such short intervals. We also show that the Möbius function has cancellation in all intervals $[X,X+X<sup>{19/35+\varepsilon}]$, improving on the work of the first and fourth authors, where the exponent was $11/20$. Both improvements are based on improved treatment of trilinear sums over short intervals which naturally reduces to estimating mean values of products of three Dirichlet polynomials. In a general setting, we reduce the task of estimating mean values of products of Dirichlet polynomials with given large value bounds to the task of showing that a certain piecewise linear function is positive. This reduction allows recent large value estimates to be incorporated. Combining this general framework with the most recent large value estimates stemming from the work of Guth and Maynard, we prove a Heath-Brown--Iwaniec type estimate for type I/II sums in intervals of length $X<sup>{19/35+\varepsilon}$ and a Baker--Harman--Pintz parallelogram type estimate for general trilinear sums in intervals of length $X<sup>{3/5+\varepsilon}$.