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Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Continued fraction expansion of the square root of n: part II

In an earlier blog postδ(n) is defined as the smallest term in the periodic part of the continued fraction of n and I showed that if r is even then δ((rm2)2+m)=r for all m1. and if r is odd, then δ((rm)2+2m)=r for all m1. Note that δ(n) is only defined if n is not a perfect square.

If you look at the first few numbers n that satisfy δ(n)=r, it would appear that they all follow the quadratric equations above. However, not all integers n such that δ(n)=r are of the forms above. In particular, if r>0 is even, then r44+r3+2r2+3r+2=(r22)24+(r+1)3 has continued fraction expansion [(r+1)2+12;¯r+1,r,r+1,(r+1)2+1] and thus δ(r44+r3+2r2+3r+2)=r and it is not of the forms above.

Similarly, if r is odd, then r4+r3+5(r+1)24 has continued fraction expansion [(r+1)(2r1)+22;¯r,2r1,r,(r+1)(2r1)+2] and thus δ(r4+r3+5(r+1)24)=r and it is not of the forms above either.


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