Finding primes & proving primality Table of Contents Home > Primality Proving > Contents

Do you need to know how to find primes or prove a large numbers primality?  Then you have come to the right place!  If you are new to these pages you should begin with the introduction.  Otherwise here is the table of contents, start where you would like:

1. Introduction
2. The Quick Tests for Small Numbers and Probable Primes
   • Finding Very Small Primes
   • Fermat, Probable-Primality and Pseudoprimes
   • Strong Probable-Primality and a Practical Test
3. The Classical Tests
   • N-1 Tests (and Pepin's Test for Fermats)
   • N+1 Tests (and the Lucas-Lehmer Test for Mersennes)
   • A Combined Test -- and more
4. The General Purpose Tests
   • Neoclassical Tests, especially APR and APR-CL
   • Using Elliptic Curves, especially the ECPP Test
   • A Polynomial Time Algorithm
5. Conclusion and Suggestions
6. Partially Annotated References

There is also a version of these pages as one (very long) page.  This long version is made by merging the smaller documents, so some of the links may not work correctly, but it should be fine for a printed version.