Arithmetics of binary quadratic forms, symmetry of their continued fractions and geometry of their de Sitter world (Q1416090)

This paper reports on, in the author's words, ``strange theorems'' confirming conjectures arising from numerical experiments on quadratic forms and continued fractions. A first theorem states that any binary quadratic form over the integers, \(f(x,y)\) attains the product of any three of its values: \(f(x_1, y_1) f(x_2, y_2) f(x_3, y_3) = f(X,Y)\); the proof, attributed to F. Aicardi, gives an explicit expression polynomial expression with integer coefficients for \(X\) and \(Y\) in terms of the coefficients of \(f\) and the various \(x_i, y_i\). The author defines a quadratic form to be {perfect} if it in fact attains the product of any \textit{two} of its values. From the first theorem, amongst the perfect forms is any which attains the value 1. The author studies reflections about level sets (hyperbola) defined by setting such a form equal to a constant. From this he shows that the slope of the asymptote of such a hyperbola has a palindromic continued fraction expansion; thereafter, the square root of any positive rational number is shown to enjoy this property. A section is devoted to the frequency of perfect forms amongst families of forms of a given shape. The final section is devoted to the ``de Sitter 2-world'': one extends the Klein model of the hyperbolic plane, defined inside the unit disk of the complex plane, to the exterior of this disk; the author sketches the existence of a natural pseudo-Riemannian metric that restricts to be the hyperbolic metric on the disk, but is Lorentzian (that is, of mixed signature) on the exterior. He relates binary quadratic forms to this, and studies the action of the modular group in this setting.