English

Polynomial densities and Heilbronn's criterion

Number Theory 2025-12-23 v2

Abstract

Heilbronn gave a sufficient condition for a number field with a totally ramified prime to fail to be norm-Euclidean. We say that Heilbronn's criterion applies to a polynomial ff if it applies to the number field K=Q[x]/(f)K=\mathbb{Q}[x]/(f) generated by ff. Suppose n3n\geq 3 is odd and p5p\geq 5 is prime with gcd(p1,n)=1\gcd(p-1,n)=1. Let Fp,n{F}_{p,n} denote the collection of monic polynomials fZ[x]f\in\mathbb{Z}[x] of degree nn that are Eisenstein at the prime pp. We order our polynomials by the natural height Ht(f)\mathrm{Ht}(f). Define δp,n(X)\delta_{p,n}(X) to be the proportion of polynomials fFp,nf\in {F}_{p,n} with Ht(f)X\mathrm{Ht}(f)\leq X for which Heilbronn's criterion applies. One has lim infXδp,n(X)max{227,  1ε(p)},\liminf_{X\to\infty}\delta_{p,n}(X)\geq \max\left\{\frac{2}{27}\,,\;1-\varepsilon(p)\right\}\,, where ε(p)0\varepsilon(p)\to 0 and is effectively computable. In particular, the lower density tends to 11 as pp\to\infty uniformly in nn. We also give a version of this result where we weaken the condition on gcd(p1,n)\gcd(p-1,n). As a corollary, we show that given an integer n2n\geq 2, a positive proportion of Eisenstein polynomials of degree nn fail to generate norm-Euclidean fields.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.16220,
  title  = {Polynomial densities and Heilbronn's criterion},
  author = {Alexis Hibbler and Kevin J. McGown and Enrique Treviño},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.16220},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:30:42.813Z