English

Quartic reductions and elliptic obstructions for perfect Euler bricks

Number Theory 2026-04-13 v1

Abstract

We show that the perfect Euler brick (perfect cuboid) problem is equivalent to the following elementary question: do there exist coprime integers a,b,m,na, b, m, n such that the two expressions (2(a2b2)mn)2+((a2+b2)(m2n2))2(2(a^2-b^2)mn)^2 + ((a^2+b^2)(m^2-n^2))^2 and (4abmn)2+((a2+b2)(m2n2))2(4abmn)^2 + ((a^2+b^2)(m^2-n^2))^2 are simultaneously perfect squares? Despite their near-identical structure (differing only in the first summand), no solution has ever been found. We reduce this quartic pair to a one-parameter family of genus-3 hyperelliptic curves CA ⁣:w2=λ8+Aλ4+1C_A\colon w^2 = \lambda^8 + A\lambda^4 + 1 and develop obstructions on the distinguished elliptic quotient EAE_A: the Kummer character χf\chi_f is non-trivial on the 4-torsion, and 2-descent arguments exclude several families of square classes. Computationally, we verify that no solution exists for parameters up to 10310^3. These results do not yet exclude perfect Euler bricks unconditionally; the remaining gap and possible approaches (including a genus-5 covering obstruction and connections to Q(2)\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{2})) are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.09328,
  title  = {Quartic reductions and elliptic obstructions for perfect Euler bricks},
  author = {René Peschmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.09328},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages, no figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:02:56.142Z