Length of continued fractions in principal quadratic fields
Tom 85 / 1998
Acta Arithmetica 85 (1998), 35-49
DOI: 10.4064/aa-85-1-35-49
Streszczenie
Let d ≥ 2 be a square-free integer and for all n ≥ 0, let $l((√d)^{2n+1})$ be the length of the continued fraction expansion of $(√d)^{2n+1}$. If ℚ(√d) is a principal quadratic field, then under a condition on the fundamental unit of ℤ[√d] we prove that there exist constants C₁ and C₂ such that $C₁(√d)^{2n+1} ≥ l((√d)^{2n+1}) ≥ C₂(√d)^{2n+1}$ for all large n. This is a generalization of a theorem of S. Chowla and S. S. Pillai [2] and an improvement in a particular case of a theorem of [6].