An improvement of the Minkowski bound for real quadratic orders using the Markoff theorem (Q538166)

This paper is a very palatable contribution to the number theory arena. The effective use of Markoff theory adds another not-so-often seen application. (Using the Markoff theorem on indefinite binary quadratic forms it is shown that every element of the class group of any real quadratic order of discriminant \(d\) has an ideal of norm less than or equal to \(1 + \lfloor \frac{\sqrt d}{3} \rfloor\)). This result on an improvement of the Markoff bound also holds for arbitrary real quadratic orders rather than the usual field discriminant case so is more useful in a general context.