English

A Generalization of the Schur-Siegel-Smyth Trace Problem

Number Theory 2022-08-09 v3

Abstract

Let α\alpha be a totally positive algebraic integer, and define its absolute trace to be Tr(α)deg(α)\frac{Tr(\alpha)}{\text{deg}(\alpha)}, the trace of α\alpha divided by the degree of α\alpha. Elementary considerations show that the absolute trace is always at least one, while it is plausible that for any ϵ>0\epsilon >0, the absolute trace is at least 2ϵ2-\epsilon with only finitely many exceptions. This is known as the Schur-Siegel-Smyth trace problem. Our aim in this paper is to show that the Schur-Siegel-Smyth trace problem can be considered as a special case of a more general problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1511.08837,
  title  = {A Generalization of the Schur-Siegel-Smyth Trace Problem},
  author = {Kyle Pratt and George Shakan and Alexandru Zaharescu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.08837},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

There is an error in the proof of Theorem 1.4, and Theorem 1.4 is not correct