Optimal systems of fundamental \(S\)-units for LLL-reduction (Q987569)

There are many Diophantine equations (e.g. norm form equations, index form equations) which can be reduced to \(S\)-unit equations. It is well known that under general conditions the number of solutions of \(S\)-unit equations is finite. However, if the number of variables is more than two, then no bound is known for the solutions themselves. The practical solution of \(S\)-unit equations in two unknowns has three steps. The first one is using the Baker's method. The second one is some variants of the LLL-algorithm and the third step is using algorithms of Wildanger and Smart. The author focuses on the second stage of this procedure and gave much better bounds for the solutions of \(S\)-unit equations than earlier. To get this result the author defines the notion of optimal system of fundamental \(S\)-units and proves that such a system exists and can be effectively constructed. Furthermore in this paper the author presents some examples to illustrate his method.