Quartic residues and binary quadratic forms

DOI10.1016/J.JNT.2004.11.003MaRDI QIDQ2566162zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 22 September 2005

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

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnt.2004.11.003

binary quadratic form quartic Jacobi symbol quartic residue

Power residues, reciprocity (11A15) Fibonacci and Lucas numbers and polynomials and generalizations (11B39) Sums of squares and representations by other particular quadratic forms (11E25)

Review text

Let \(p\equiv 1\pmod 4\) be a prime and \(m\) an integer such that \(p\) does not divide \(m\). The basic problem of quartic residues is to characterize those primes \(p\) for which \(m\) is a quartic residue modulo \(p\). A very celebrated result in this direction being the result of Gauss that 2 is a quartic residue modulo \(p\) if and only \(p=x^2+64y^2\) for some integers \(x\) and \(y\). The author solves the problem for general \(m\) by giving a similar result, but with \(p\) being represented by one from a set of binary quadratic forms. Let \(d>1\) be a squarefree integer and \(\epsilon_d\) be the fundamental unit of the quadratic field \(\mathbb Q(\sqrt{d})\). Suppose that \(p\equiv 1\pmod 4\) is a prime such that \((d/p)=1\) (the Legendre symbol). Many mathematicians tried to characterize primes of this form such that \(\varepsilon_d\) is a quadratic residue modulo \(p\). For example, \textit{A. Aigner} and \textit{H. Reichardt} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 184, 158--160 (1942; Zbl 0027.01102)], and independently \textit{P. Barrucand} and \textit{H. Cohn} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 238, 67--70 (1969; Zbl 0207.36202)] proved that \(\varepsilon_2=1+\sqrt{2}\) is a quadratic residue of a prime \(p\equiv 1\pmod 8\) iff \(p=x^2+32y^2\). The author establishes a much more general result of this form and likewise he characterizes when \(\varepsilon_d\) is a quartic residue modulo \(p\). On p. 418 of his book ``Reciprocity laws: From Euler to Eisenstein (2000; Zbl 0949.11002), \textit{F. Lemmermeyer} proposed the problem of determining \(\varepsilon_d^{(p+1)/4}\) modulo \(p\) in terms of binary quadratic forms. The author solves this problem. For integers \(a\) and \(b\) the Lucas sequence \(\{u_n(a,b)\}\) is defined as follows: \(u_0(a,b)=0,~u_1(a,b)=1\) and, for \(n\geq 1\), \(u_{n+1}(a,b)=bu_n(a,b)-au_{n-1}(b)\). Let \(P_n=u_n(-1,2)\) be the Pell sequence. In 1974 \textit{Emma Lehmer} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 268--269, 294--301 (1974; Zbl 0289.12007)] showed that \(p\) divides the \((p-1)/4\)th terms of the Pell sequence iff \(p=x^2+32y^2\) for some integers \(x\) and \(y\). The author characterizes the primes \(p\) dividing the \((p-(-1/p))/4\)th term of the Lucas sequence \(u_n(a,b)\) in terms of representability by binary quadratic forms. This generalizes Lehmer's result and several similar results. The results of the author concerning the above problems generalize a large body of hitherto isolated results, but are unfortunately too complicated to be stated in this review. The proofs are quite computational and only involve a modest amount of conceptual machinery.

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