House of algebraic integers symmetric about the unit circle (Q2116762)

The house \(\left\lceil \alpha \right\rceil \) of an algebraic integer \(\alpha \) is the greatest modulus of its conjugates. Suppose that \(\alpha \) is non-zero and not root of unity. Then, a result of Kronecker says that \( \left\lceil \alpha \right\rceil >1,\) and a conjecture of \textit{A. Schinzel} and \textit{H. Zassenhaus} [Mich. Math. J. 12, 81--85 (1965; Zbl 0128.03402)] states that \[ \left\lceil \alpha \right\rceil >1+\frac{c}{\deg (\alpha )}, \tag{\(*\)} \] for an absolute positive constant \(c.\) This conjecture was recently proved by \textit{V. Dimitrov} [``A proof of the Schinzel-Zassenhaus conjecture on polynomials'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1912.12545}] with \(c=\log \sqrt[4]{2}\approx 0.17328.\) Moreover, Dimitrov showed that (\(*\)) holds with \(c=\log \sqrt{2}\approx 0.34657,\) when \(\alpha \) is restricted to the set, say \(R,\) of reciprocal algebraic integers (\(\alpha \) is said to be reciprocal if \(\alpha ^{-1}\) is a conjugate of \(\alpha )\) without conjugates of modulus \(1.\) Using some tools from potential theory, the author of the paper under review improves this last value of the constant \(c\) to \(\log \sqrt{1+\sqrt{2}}\approx 0.44068 \) for \(\alpha \) running through the same set \(R.\)