English

Small solutions of ternary quadratic congruences with averaging over the moduli

Number Theory 2026-01-29 v4

Abstract

In a recent paper, we proved that for any large enough odd modulus qNq\in \mathbb{N} and fixed α2N\alpha_2\in \mathbb{N} coprime to qq, the congruence x12+α2x22+α3x320modq x_1^2+\alpha_2x_2^2+\alpha_3x_3^2\equiv 0 \bmod{q} has a solution of (x1,x2,x3)Z3(x_1,x_2,x_3)\in \mathbb{Z}^3 with x3x_3 coprime to qq of height max{x1,x2,x3}q11/24+ε\max\{|x_1|,|x_2|,|x_3|\}\le q^{11/24+\varepsilon} for, in a sense, almost all α3\alpha_3, where α3\alpha_3 runs over the reduced residue classes modulo qq. Here it was of significance that 11/24<1/211/24<1/2, so we broke a natural barrier. In this paper, we average the moduli qq in addition, establishing the existence of a solution of height Q3/8+εα2ε\le Q^{3/8+\varepsilon}\alpha_2^{\varepsilon} for almost all pairs (q,α3)(q,\alpha_3), with QQ large enough, Q<q2QQ<q\le 2Q, qq coprime to 2α22\alpha_2 and α3\alpha_3 running over the reduced residue classes modulo qq.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.16980,
  title  = {Small solutions of ternary quadratic congruences with averaging over the moduli},
  author = {Stephan Baier and Aishik Chattopadhyay},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.16980},
  year   = {2026}
}

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11 pages