Related papers: Continuants and some decompositions into squares

In this essay, we see how prime cyclotomic fields (cyclotomic fields obtained by adjoining a primitive p-th root of unity to Q, where p is an odd prime) can lead to elegant proofs of number theoretical concepts. We namely develop the notion…

Proper continued fractions are generalized continued fractions with positive integer numerators $a_i$ and integer denominators with $b_i\geq a_i$. In this paper we study the strength of approximation of irrational numbers to their…

We give a simple direct proof of Fermat's two squares theorem. Our argument uses no intricate notions or ideas; one might say that it is a proof by careful bookkeeping. As such, the proof may be particularly easy to comprehend by students…

Representations of primes by simple quadratic forms, such as $\pm a^2\pm qb^2$, is a subject that goes back to Fermat, Lagrange, Legendre, Euler, Gauss and many others. We are interested in a comprehensive list of such results, for $q\le…

We show that Wilson's theorem as well as the Wilson quotient can be described by supercongruences modulo any higher prime power involving terms of power sums of Fermat quotients. The new approach uses Bell polynomials and Newton's…

Suppose that $n$ is $0$ or $4$ modulo $6$. We show that there are infinitely many primes of the form $p^2 + nq^2$ with both $p$ and $q$ prime, and obtain an asymptotic for their number. In particular, when $n = 4$ we verify the `Gaussian…

For a fixed quadratic irreducible polynomial $f$ with no fixed prime factors at prime arguments, we prove that there exist infinitely many primes $p$ such that $f(p)$ has at most 4 prime factors, improving a classical result of Richert who…

The notion of 'bifurcating continued fractions' is introduced. Two coupled sequences of non-negative integers are obtained from an ordered pair of positive real numbers in a manner that generalizes the notion of continued fractions. These…

A well-known conjecture asserts that there are infinitely many primes $p$ for which $p - 1$ is a perfect square. We obtain upper and lower bounds of matching order on the number of pairs of distinct primes $p,q \le x$ for which $(p - 1)(q -…

In this paper we confirm a conjecture of Sun which states that each positive integer is a sum of a square, an odd square and a triangular number. Given any positive integer m, we show that p=2m+1 is a prime congruent to 3 modulo 4 if and…

In this paper we study the properties of an algorithm for generating continued fractions in the field of p-adic numbers $\mathbb{Q}_p$. First of all, we obtain an analogue of the Galois' Theorem for classical continued fractions. Then, we…

Kaplansky [2003] proved a theorem on the simultaneous representation of a prime $p$ by two different principal binary quadratic forms. Later, Brink found five more like theorems and claimed that there were no others. By putting…

In this paper, we prove that for any fixed $205/243<\gamma\leqslant1$, every sufficiently large $N$ satisfying $N\equiv 5 \pmod {24}$ can be represented as five squares of primes with one prime in $\mathcal{P}_\gamma$, which improves the…

In 1953, Carlitz~\cite{Car53} showed that all permutation polynomials over $\F_q$, where $q>2$ is a power of a prime, are generated by the special permutation polynomials $x^{q-2}$ (the inversion) and $ ax+b$ (affine functions, where $0\neq…

Let $\pi(x;\gamma_1,\gamma_2)$ denote the number of primes $p$ with $p\leqslant x$ and $p=\lfloor n^{1/\gamma_1}_1\rfloor=\lfloor n^{1/\gamma_2}_2\rfloor$, where $\lfloor t\rfloor$ denotes the integer part of $t\in\mathbb{R}$ and…

In this article, we give a polynomial algorithm to decide whether a given permutation $\sigma$ is sortable with two stacks in series. This is indeed a longstanding open problem which was first introduced by Knuth. He introduced the stack…

In this paper we recast the Serret theorem about a characterization of palindromic continued fractions in the context of polynomial continued fractions. Then, using the relation between symmetric tridiagonal matrices and polynomial…

For $n,\,d\ge1$ let $p(n,2d)$ denote the smallest number $p$ such that every sum of squares of forms of degree $d$ in $\mathbb{R}[x_1,\dots,x_n]$ is a sum of $p$ squares. We establish lower bounds for these numbers that are considerably…

We present fermionic sum representations of the characters $\chi^{(p,p')}_{r,s}$ of the minimal $M(p,p')$ models for all relatively prime integers $p'>p$ for some allowed values of $r$ and $s$. Our starting point is binomial (q-binomial)…

Let $f$ be a positive definite (non-classic) integral quaternary quadratic form. We say $f$ is strongly $s$-regular if it satisfies a regularity property on the number of representations of squares of integers. In this article, we prove…