English

A general Lagrange Theorem

Number Theory 2007-12-19 v1 Dynamical Systems

Abstract

The ordinary continued fractions expansion of a real number is based on the Euclidean division. Variants of the latter yield variants of the former, all encompassed by a more general Dynamical Systems framework. For all these variants the Lagrange Theorem holds: a number has an eventually periodic expansion if and only if it is a quadratic irrational. This fact is surely known for specific expansions, but the only proof for the general case that I could trace in the literature follows as an implicit corollary from much deeper results by Boshernitzan and Carroll on interval exchange transformations. It may then be useful to have at hand a simple and virtually computation-free proof of a general Lagrange Theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0712.2996,
  title  = {A general Lagrange Theorem},
  author = {Giovanni Panti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.2996},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:55:23.572Z