If and are Eisenstein integers, we say that divides if there is some Eisenstein integer such that . A non-unit Eisenstein integer is said to be an Eisenstein prime if its only non-unit divisors are of the form , where is any of the six units. They are the corresponding concept to the
Gaussian primes in the Gaussian integers. There are two types of Eisenstein prime. • an ordinary
prime number (or
rational prime) which is congruent to is also an Eisenstein prime. • and each rational prime congruent to are equal to the norm of an Eisenstein integer . Thus, such a prime may be factored as , and these factors are Eisenstein primes: they are precisely the Eisenstein integers whose norm is a rational prime. In the second type, factors of , 1-\omega and 1-\omega^2 are
associates: 1-\omega=(-\omega)(1-\omega^2), so it is regarded as a special type in some books. The first few Eisenstein primes of the form are: :
2,
5,
11,
17,
23,
29,
41,
47,
53,
59,
71,
83,
89,
101, ... . Natural primes that are congruent to or modulo are
not Eisenstein primes: they admit nontrivial factorizations in . For example: : : . In general, if a natural prime is modulo and can therefore be written as , then it factorizes over as : . Some non-real Eisenstein primes are : , , , , , , . Up to conjugacy and unit multiples, the primes listed above, together with and , are all the Eisenstein primes of
absolute value not exceeding . , the largest known real Eisenstein prime is the
12th-largest known prime , discovered by Péter Szabolcs and
PrimeGrid. == Eisenstein series ==