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Discriminantal divisors and binary quadratic forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2009

Ezra Brown
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
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An ancipital form is a form [a, b, c] in which b= 0 or b= a; these fall into pairs of associates: [a, 0, c] and [c, 0, a] (type 1), and [a, a, c] and [4c–a, 4c–a, c] (type 2). The set of discriminantal divisors of discriminant d is formed by choosing, from each pair of primitive associate ancipital forms of discriminant d, exactly one of the two leading coefficients. In this article we study representations of discriminantal divisors of a given discriminant by binary quadratic forms of that discriminant, previously studied by the author and by G. Pall. We are concerned here with discriminants d= 4kpq, where k ≥ 1, p = 1, q = 3 (mod 4) are primes, and d = 4kp, where k ≥ 1 and p is an odd prime. This investigation arose in connection with the search for integral solutions of x2Dy2 = – 1.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Glasgow Mathematical Journal Trust 1972

References

REFERENCES

1.Brown, Ezra, Representations of discriminantal divisors by binary quadratic forms, J. Number Theory 3 (1971), 213225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Pall, Gordon, On generalized quaternions, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 59 (1946), 280332.Google Scholar
3.Pall, Gordon, Discriminantal divisors of binary quadratic forms, J. Number Theory 1 (1969), 525532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar