English

There are no universal ternary quadratic forms over biquadratic fields

Number Theory 2020-10-14 v2

Abstract

We study totally positive definite quadratic forms over the ring of integers OK\mathcal{O}_K of a totally real biquadratic field K=Q(m,s)K=\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{m}, \sqrt{s}). We restrict our attention to classical forms (i.e., those with all non-diagonal coefficients in 2OK2\mathcal{O}_K) and prove that no such forms in three variables are universal (i.e., represent all totally positive elements of OK\mathcal{O}_K). This provides further evidence towards Kitaoka's conjecture that there are only finitely many number fields over which such forms exist. One of our main tools are additively indecomposable elements of OK\mathcal{O}_K; we prove several new results about their properties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.05422,
  title  = {There are no universal ternary quadratic forms over biquadratic fields},
  author = {Jakub Krásenský and Magdaléna Tinková and Kristýna Zemková},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.05422},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

To appear in Proc. Edinburgh Math. Soc

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:12:59.897Z