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Small solutions of congruences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2010

R. C. Baker
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway College, Egham, Surrey.
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Throughout the paper, let m be a natural number and let F(x1,…, xn) be a form of degree k ≥ 2 with integer coefficients, n ≥ 3. We are concerned with finding solutions of the congruence

for which x is a small non-zero integer vector. For example, in the case k = 2 it was shown by Schinzel, Schlickewei and Schmidt [11] that is a solution of (1) satisfying

provided that n is odd. This is best possible for n = 3, as we shall see later. Of course we can get an exponent (1/2) + (1/(2n – 2)) trivially for even n. I do not know how to improve on this. D. R. Heath-Brown (private communication) can improve the exponent in (2) to (l/2) + ε for n ≥ 4 and prime m > C1(ε).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University College London 1983

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