On the behavior of Mahler's measure under iteration (Q783999)

For a given algebraic number \(\alpha \), the sequence of real numbers \((\beta_{n})_{n\in \mathbb{N}}\) defined, recursively, by the relation: \[ \beta _{n+1}=M(\beta _{n}), \] where \(M\) is the Mahler measure and \(\beta _{0}:=\alpha \), is either eventually constant, i.e., there is \(s\in \mathbb{N}\cup \{0\}\) such that \[ \beta _{n}=\beta _{s},\forall n>s, \tag{*} \] or increases strictly towards infinity; in this last case we set \(s:=\infty \). Such a sequence \((\beta _{n})_{n\in \mathbb{N}}\) has been, firstly, considered by \textit{A. Dubickas} [Can. Math. Bull. 45, No. 2, 196--203 (2002; Zbl 1086.11049)] (with \(\beta_{0}\) being the house of \(\alpha )\), who called the least possible value of \(s\), verifying (*), the stopping time of \(\alpha \) (under \(M)\), and posed several related questions. Also, he established, in a later paper [Monatsh. Math. 141, No. 2, 119--126 (2004; Zbl 1065.11084)], that for every \(s\in \mathbb{N}\cup \{0\}\), there is a cubic algebraic integer of norm \(2\) and stopping time \(s\). In the paper under review, the authors continue to investigate the stopping times of algebraic integers. First, they generalize the above mentioned result of Dubickas, by showing that for any degree at least \(3\) and any nonunit norm there are algebraic integers of every stopping time. Then, focussing on the case where the algebraic integer \(\alpha \) is a unit, they prove that \(s\in \{0,1,\infty \}\), when \(\deg (\alpha )=4\) or when the Galois group of the normal closure of \(\mathbb{Q}(\alpha )\) ``contains'' the alternating group \(A_{\deg(\alpha )}\). Finally, by considering the products of the form \(\tau \theta \), where \(\tau \) is a Salem number, of degree at least \(6\), and \(\theta \) is a reciprocal quadratic Pisot number, satisfying \(\theta \notin \mathbb{Q}(\tau )\), they obtain units, with arbitrarily large but finite stopping time, for any degree at least \(12\) and multiple of \(4\).