On continued fraction partial quotients of square roots of primes

DOI10.1016/J.JNT.2023.06.013MaRDI QIDQ6093376zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Vitězslav Kala, Piotr Miska

Publication date 6 September 2023

Published in Journal of Number Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.07198

zbMATH Keywords

continued fractionprime numbersquare root of a positive integer

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Continued fractions (11A55)

Abstract: We show 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 period of continued fraction of $sqrtp$ or $sqrt2p$. We also prove that if $p$ is a prime number and $D=p$ or $2p$ is such that the length of the period of continued fraction expansion of $sqrtD$ is divisible by $4$, then $1$ appears as a partial quotient in the continued fraction of $sqrtD$. Furthermore, we give an upper bound for the period length of continued fraction expansion of $sqrtD$, where $D$ is a positive non-square, and factorize some family of polynomials with integral coefficients connected with continued fractions of square roots of positive integers. These results answer several questions recently posed by Miska and Ulas.

Review text

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 \(\sqrt{D}\).

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Cited in

(3)

• Continued fractions for (d with constant partial quotients
• Classification of d for Which the Period Length of the Continued Fraction Expansion of √d is Odd
• Algebraic Integers with Continued Fraction Expansions Containing Palindromes and Square Roots with Prescribed Periods

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