A description of continued fraction expansions of quadratic surds represented by polynomials (Q1876227)

The paper under review is devoted to the study of quadratic polynomials in one indeterminate \(X\) with integer coefficients satisfying the following conditions: the discriminants of the considered polynomials are positive and their leading terms are perfect squares of rational numbers. The choice of its topic is motivated by a theorem due to \textit{A. Schinzel} [see Acta Arith. 6, 393--413 (1961; Zbl 0099.04003); ibid. 7, 287--298 (1962; Zbl 0112.28001); ibid. 47, 295 (1986; Zbl 0603.10006)], which states that if \(D(X)\) is an integral quadratic polynomial whose leading term is positive but is not a perfect square of a rational number, then the length \(l(\sqrt{D(X)})\) of the period of the continued fraction expansion of \(\sqrt{D(X)}\) converges to infinity when \(X\) tends to infinity. The present paper provides, for each nonzero integer \(n\), a family \(\{D _ k (X) = f _ k ^ 2X ^ 2 + 2e _ kX + C\}\), such that \(e _ k ^ 2 - f _ k ^ 2C = n\), the period length \(l _ k = l(\sqrt{D(X)})\) is constant, for each index \(k\), and lim\(_ {k \to \infty } l _ k = \infty \). This generalizes earlier results published in several papers by the first author and his coauthors.