A prime constellation of four successive primes with minimal distance . The term was coined by Paul Stäckel (1892-1919;
Tietze 1965, p. 19). The quadruplet (2, 3, 5, 7) has smaller minimal distance,
but it is an exceptional special case. With the exception of (5, 7, 11, 13), a prime
quadruple must be of the form (, , , ). The first few values of which give prime quadruples are , 3, 6, 27, 49, 62, 69, 108, 115, ... (OEIS A014561),
and the first few values of are 5 (the exceptional case), 11, 101, 191, 821, 1481, 1871,
2081, 3251, 3461, ... (OEIS A007530). The number
of prime quadruplets with largest member less than , , ..., are 1, 2, 5, 12, 38, 166, 899, 4768, ... (OEIS A050258; Nicely 1999).
The asymptotic formula for the frequency of prime quadruples
is analogous to that for other prime constellations,
(1)
(2)
where
(OEIS A061642) is the Hardy-Littlewood constant
for prime quadruplets.