English

Sharpening Borel's result in Diophantine approximation

Dynamical Systems 2026-07-05 v1 Number Theory

Abstract

In this paper, we refine Borel's 1903 result in Diophantine approximation by providing sharper bounds for the minimum of three consecutive approximation coefficients Θn(x)\Theta_n(x), defined for any real number xx with regular continued fraction (RCF) expansion x=[0;a1,a2,]x=[0;a_1,a_2,\dots] as Θn=qn2xpnqn\Theta_n = q_n^2\left| x-\frac{p_n}{q_n}\right|. Here pnqn\frac{p_n}{q_n} is the nnth RCF convergent of xx. Borel's result states that for all (irrational) xx and all nNn\in\mathbb{N}, min{Θn1(x),Θn(x),Θn+1(x)}15. \min \left\{ \Theta_{n-1}(x),\Theta_n(x),\Theta_{n+1}(x)\right\} \leq \frac{1}{\sqrt{5}}. We focus on the situation where an+1=1a_{n+1}=1, since otherwise a result by F.~Bagemihl and J.R.~McLaughlin from 1966 implies that the Borel-bound 1/51/\sqrt{5} can already be improver to 1/81/\sqrt{8}.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.04421,
  title  = {Sharpening Borel's result in Diophantine approximation},
  author = {Savita S. Adhin and Ayreena Bakhtawar and Cor Kraaikamp},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.04421},
  year   = {2026}
}