Sifting for small primes from an arithmetic progression

In this work and its sister paper (Friedlander and Iwaniec (2023)), we give a new proof of the famous Linnik theorem bounding the least prime in an arithmetic progression. Using sieve machinery in both papers, we are able to dispense with the log-free zero density bounds and the repulsion property of exceptional zeros, two deep innovations begun by Linnik and relied on in earlier proofs.