English

The Least Common Multiple of a Bivariate Quadratic Sequence

Number Theory 2023-07-13 v3

Abstract

Let FZ[x,y]F\in\mathbb{Z}[x,y] be some polynomial of degree 2. In this paper we find the asymptotic behaviour of the least common multiple of the values of FF up to NN. More precisely, we consider ψF(N)=log(LCM0<F(x,y)N{F(x,y)})\psi_F(N) = \log\left(\text{LCM}_{0<F(x,y)\leq N}\left\lbrace F(x,y)\right\rbrace\right) as NN tends to infinity. It turns out that there are 4 different possible asymptotic behaviours depending on FF. For a generic FF, we show that the function ψF(N)\psi_F(N) has order of magnitude NloglogNlogN\frac{N\log\log N}{\sqrt{\log N}}. We also show that this is the expected order of magnitude according to a suitable random model. However, special polynomials FF can have different behaviours, which sometimes deviate from the random model. We give a complete description of the order of magnitude of these possible behaviours, and when each one occurs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2206.05817,
  title  = {The Least Common Multiple of a Bivariate Quadratic Sequence},
  author = {Noam Kimmel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.05817},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

rewrote parts of section 5.3

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:48:10.200Z