On continued fraction partial quotients of square roots of primes (Q6093376)

Motivated by recent findings of \textit{P. Miska} and \textit{M. Ulas} [Exp. Math. 31, No. 1, 238--251 (2022; Zbl 1487.11008)], the authors of this paper study the problem of existence of specific partial quotients in the periodic part of continued fraction expansions of \(\sqrt{p}\) and \(\sqrt{2p}\), where \(p\) is a prime number. The main result shows that for each positive integer \(a\) there exist only finitely many prime numbers \(p\) such that \(a\) appears an odd number of times in the periodic part of the continued fraction of \(\sqrt{p}\) or \(\sqrt{2p}\). In particular, if \(a=1\), then there is no prime \(p\) such that periodic part of the continued fraction expansion of \(\sqrt{p}\) contains \(2i+1\geq 5\) partial quotients equal to 1. Moreover, the authors prove that if \(p\) is a prime number and \(D=p\) or \(2p\) is such that the length of the periodic part of the continued fraction expansion of \(\sqrt{D}\) is divisible by 4, then 1 appears as a partial quotient in the continued fraction of \(\sqrt{D}\).