Counting Minimal Triples for a Generalized Markoff Equation

Markoff equation is a well known Diophantine equation, that was studied by Markoff in 1879--1880. The most interesting result about this equation that it has infinitely many integer solutions called by Markoff triples, that have one-to-one correspondence with certain indefinite quadratic forms. In this paper, the authors generalize this equation to an equation of the form\N\[\Na^{2}+b^{2}+c^{2}=3abc+m \quad (m>1).\N\]\NThey mainly focus on studying the positive integer solutions of this generalization with introducing the notion of minimal triples. They also prove that every solution belongs to a unique infinite solution tree generated by a minimal triple via the following Vieta involutions:\N\[\N\begin{aligned} V_1(a,b,c) &= (3bc-a,\; b,\; c),\\\NV_2(a,b,c) &= (a,\; 3ac-b,\; c),\\\NV_3(a,b,c) &= (a,\; b,\; 3ab-c). \end{aligned}\N\]\NThey also show that there is a correspondence between the minimal triples with the fixed first component \(a\) and fundamental solutions of the binary quadratic form \N\[\Nx^{2}-3axy+y^{2}=m-a^{2}.\N\]\NThis result leads to effective formulas for counting and computing minimal triples. In particular, the result gives a criterion for the existence of minimal triples of the form \((1,b,c)\). Furthermore, several questions and conjectures on the distribution of minimal triples are given and supported by numerical evidence.

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