English

A counterexample to the weak Shanks conjecture

Complex Variables 2024-05-28 v1 Classical Analysis and ODEs Functional Analysis

Abstract

We give an example of a function ff non-vanishing in the closed bidisk and the affine polynomial minimizing the norm of 1pf1-pf in the Hardy space of the bidisk among all affine polynomials pp. We show that this polynomial vanishes inside the bidisk. This provides a counterexample to the weakest form of a conjecture due to Shanks that has been open since 1980, with applications that arose from digital filter design. This counterexample has a simple form and follows naturally from [7], where the phenomenon of zeros seeping into the unit disk was already observed for similar minimization problems in one variable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.16943,
  title  = {A counterexample to the weak Shanks conjecture},
  author = {Catherine Bénéteau and Dmitry Khavinson and Daniel Seco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.16943},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:41:34.774Z