English

On the subgroup generated by solutions of Pell's equation

Number Theory 2017-08-25 v2

Abstract

Equivalence classes of solutions of the Diophantine equation a2+mb2=c2a^2+mb^2=c^2 form an infinitely generated abelian group GmG_m, where mm is a fixed square-free positive integer. Solutions of Pell's equation x2my2=1x^2-my^2=1 generate a subgroup PmP_m of GmG_m. We prove that PmP_m and Gm/PmG_m/P_m have infinite rank for all m>1m>1. We also give several examples of mm for which Gm/PmG_m/P_m has nontrivial torsion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.00440,
  title  = {On the subgroup generated by solutions of Pell's equation},
  author = {Elena C. Covill and Mohammad Javaheri and Nikolai A. Krylov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.00440},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Corrected version, where we used a different approach based on the Frobenius density theorem to prove the infinitude of the rank of the factor group Gm/Pm for all square-free integer m>1. 14 pages