Primitive divisors of some Lehmer-Pierce sequences (Q2378052)

The question of primitive prime divisors (PPD for sort) of terms of recurrence sequences has a long history, going back to results of Bang, Zsigmondy, Schinzel and many others. The classical case of (integral) Lucas- and Lehmer sequences has been completely settled by Bilu, Hanrot and Voutier. In the paper PPD-s of terms of Lehmer-Pierce sequences \(u_n=N_{K/{\mathbb Q}}(u^n-1)\) are studied, where \(K\) is a real quadratic number field and \(u\) is a unit in its ring of integers. A result of Schinzel implies that there exist constants \(C_1\) and \(C_2\) (independent of \(u\)) such that \(u_n\) has a PPD for every \(n>C_1\) if \(N_{K/{\mathbb Q}}(u)=1\), and \(u_n\) has a PPD for every \(n>C_2\) with \(n\not\equiv 2\pmod{4}\) if \(N_{K/{\mathbb Q}}(u)=-1\). The main result of this paper is that these constants \(C_1\) and \(C_2\) are made explicit. Furthermore, the author provides a complete list of terms of such sequences that do not have PPD-s. The main tools of the proofs are certain inequalities relating \(u\) and those indices \(n\) for which \(u_n\) has no PPD. These inequalities are obtained using certain properties related to cyclotomic polynomials, partly based upon a result of Schinzel.