English

Most totally real fields do not have universal forms or Northcott property

Number Theory 2025-05-29 v2

Abstract

We show that, in the space of all totally real fields equipped with the constructible topology, the set of fields that admit a universal quadratic form, or have the Northcott property, is meager. The main tool is a new theorem on the number of square classes of totally positive units represented by a quadratic lattice of a given rank.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.11082,
  title  = {Most totally real fields do not have universal forms or Northcott property},
  author = {Nicolas Daans and Vitezslav Kala and Siu Hang Man and Martin Widmer and Pavlo Yatsyna},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.11082},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

author accepted manuscript, 13 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:47:40.568Z