Regular ternary polygonal forms (Q2046858)

For a positive integer \(m\geq 3\), a ternary \(m\)-gonal form is an expression of the type \[ \triangle_{m,(a,b,c)}(x_1,x_2,x_3) = ap_m(x_1)+bp_m(x_2)+cp_m(x_3), \] where \(a,b,c \in \mathbb{N}\), \(x_i\in \mathbb{Z}\) and \(p_m(x_i)\) is the \(x_i\)-th generalized \(m\)-gonal number \(((m-2)x_i^2 -(m-4)x_i)/2\). A quadratic polynomial \(f(\bar{x}) \in \mathbb{Q}[x_1,\dots,x_n]\) is said to be regular if for every \(a\in \mathbb{Q}\), the equation \(f(\bar{x})=a\) has a global solution \(\bar{x}\in \mathbb{Z}^n\) whenever it has local solutions \(\bar{x}\in \mathbb{Z}_p^n\) for all primes \(p\) (including \(p=\infty\)). Regular ternary triangular forms (the case \(m=3\)) have been studied in detail; \textit{M. Kim} and \textit{B.-K. Oh} [J. Number Theory 214, 137--169; (2020; Zbl 1446.11058] have shown that there are exactly 49 triples \((a,b,c)\in \mathbb{N}^3\) with \(a\leq b\leq c\) and \(\gcd(a,b,c)=1\) for which \(\triangle_{3,(a,b,c)}\) is regular. The main result of the present paper is that there are no regular ternary \(m\)-gonal forms when \(m\) is sufficiently large. In order to establish this result, the authors bound the product \(abc\) for regular primitive ternary \(m\)-gonal forms. As a first step, by considering the quadratic form with congruence conditions obtained from \(\triangle_{m,(a,b,c)}\) by completing squares, sufficient conditions are determined for a positive integer to be locally represented by the form over \(\mathbb{Z}_p\). Following a strategy used by the reviewer [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 345, 853--863 (1994; Zbl 0810.11019] to bound successive minima of regular quadratic forms, the authors then use explicit estimates for character sums in order to achieve the desired bound on \(abc\) and complete the proof. For this step, a version of the Polya-Vinogradov inequality due to \textit{G. Bachman} and \textit{L. Rachakonda} [Ramanujan J. 5, 65--71 (2001; Zbl 0991.11047] is used. In the process of the proof, an explicit upper bound is produced for the least prime \(q\) such that \((D/q)=-1\) and \(\gcd(q,M)=1\), where \(D\) is a given nonsquare discriminant, \(M\) is an integer exceeding 1 with \(\gcd(D,M)=1\) and \((D/q)\) denotes the Kronecker symbol. From this, sequences of primes that are inert in a certain quadratic field are constructed and shown to satisfy an inequality bounding the next such prime by a product of the previous ones.