The least quadratic residue and integers represented by quadratic forms

Let $\ell(n)$ denote the least non-trivial reduced quadratic residue modulo $n$; that is, $\ell(n)$ denotes the smallest square-free integer $r>1$ with $(r,n)=1$ and $r\equiv x^2 \bmod {n}$. We establish nearly optimal bounds for $\ell(n)$, both in terms of the magnitude of $n$ and of its number of prime factors $\omega(n)$. In particular, we construct moduli $n$ for which $\ell(n)$ is unexpectedly large. As an application of our results, we prove bounds for the rate at which binary quadratic forms with bounded discriminant represent all positive integers up to $N$.