On a conjecture of Mordell concerning binary cubic forms

In the Transactions of the American Math. Society, vol. I, 1900, and vol. IV, 1904, Mr E. Kasner treats exhaustively the (2, 2) double binary form and discusses the theory connected with double binary forms and multiple binary forms in general terms. He shows the relations between the systems of multiple binary forms with digredient variables and the forms with cogredient variables. Hitherto nothing seems to have been written on systems of triple binary forms (with regard to higher forms see a paper on the (1, 1, 1, 1) form by C. Segre); so here I propose to discuss the complete system of a (1, 1, 1) binary form which consists of six forms connected by one syzygy. When two of the variables are the same we naturally get the (2, 1) form and when the three are the same We get the (3) or cubic binary form.

We develop an algorithm that determines, for a given squarefree binary form $F$ with real coefficients, a smallest representative of its orbit under $\operatorname{SL}(2,\mathbb Z)$, either with respect to the Euclidean norm or with respect to the maximum norm of the coefficient vector. This is based on earlier work of Cremona and Stoll. We then generalize our approach so that it also applies to the problem of finding an integral representative of smallest height in the $\operatorname{PGL}(2,\mathbb Q)$ conjugacy class of an endomorphism of the projective line. Having a small model of such an endomorphism is useful for various computations.

In these lectures we give an introduction to the reduction theory of binary forms starting with quadratic forms with real coefficients, Hermitian forms, and then define the Julia quadratic for any degree n binary form. A survey of a reduction algorithm over ${\mathbb{Z}}$ is described based on recent work of Cremona and Stoll.

W-groups and values of binary forms

There is a classical geometric construction which uses a binary quadratic form to define an involution on the space of binary d-ics. We give a complete characterization of a general class of such involutions which are definable using compound transvectant formulae. We also study the associated varieties of forms which are preserved by such involutions. Along the way we prove a recoupling formula for transvectants, which is used to deduce a system of equations satisfied by the coefficients in these involutions.

Completely p-primitive binary quadratic forms

A method is developed for finding all G-modules (where G is a connected and simply connected semisimple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero) whose algebra of invariants has prescribed homological dimension. The main theorem says that the number of such G-modules, considered to within isomorphism and addition of a trivial direct summand, is finite. The same result is proved for finite groups G. All algebras of invariants of homological dimension ?10 of a single binary form are found, as well as all algebras of invariants of a system of binary forms that are hypersurfaces. It is shown that the exceptional simple groups have no irreducible modules with an algebra of invariants of small nonzero homological dimension. Bibliography: 46 titles.

Suppose f ( x , y ) f(x,y) is a binary form of degree d d with coefficients in a field K ⊆ C K \subseteq \mathbb {C} . The K K -rank of f f is the smallest number of d d -th powers of linear forms over K K of which f f is a K K -linear combination. We prove that for d ≥ 5 d \ge 5 , there always exists a form of degree d d with at least three different ranks over various fields. The K K -rank of a form f f (such as x 3 y 2 x^3y^2 ) may depend on whether -1 is a sum of two squares in K K .

We discuss multiplicative properties of the binary quadratic form $a x^2 + b x y + c y^2$ by considering a ring of matrices which is closed under a triple product. We prove that the ring forms a ternary algebra in the sense of Hestenes, and then derive both multiplicative formulas for a large class of binary quadratic forms and a type of multiplication for points on a conic section which generalizes the algebra of rational points on the unit circle.

Given an indefinite binary quaternionic Hermitian form $f$ with coefficients in a maximal order of a definite quaternion algebra over $\mathbb Q$, we give a precise asymptotic equivalent to the number of nonequivalent representations, satisfying some congruence properties, of the rational integers with absolute value at most $s$ by $f$, as $s$ tends to $+\infty$. We compute the volumes of hyperbolic 5-manifolds constructed by quaternions using Eisenstein series. In the Appendix, V. Emery computes these volumes using Prasad's general formula. We use hyperbolic geometry in dimension 5 to describe the reduction theory of both definite and indefinite binary quaternionic Hermitian forms.

Composition of oriented binary quadratic form-classes over commutative rings

We obtain estimates for the number of integral solutions in large balls, of inequalities of the form $|Q(x, y)| < \epsilon$, where $Q$ is an indefinite binary quadratic form, in terms of the Hurwitz continued fraction expansions of the slopes of the lines on which $Q$ vanishes. The method is based on a coding of geodesics on the modular surface via Hurwitz expansions of the endpoints of their lifts in the Poincare half-plane.

Chapter 25 Binary Quartic Forms

For a binary quadratic form $Q$, we consider the action of $\mathrm{SO}_Q$ on a two-dimensional vector space. This representation yields perhaps the simplest nontrivial example of a prehomogeneous vector space that is not irreducible, and of a coregular space whose underlying group is not semisimple. We show that the nondegenerate integer orbits of this representation are in natural bijection with orders in cubic fields having a fixed "lattice shape". Moreover, this correspondence is discriminant-preserving: the value of the invariant polynomial of an element in this representation agrees with the discriminant of the corresponding cubic order. We use this interpretation of the integral orbits to solve three classical-style counting problems related to cubic orders and fields. First, we give an asymptotic formula for the number of cubic orders having bounded discriminant and nontrivial automorphism group. More generally, we give an asymptotic formula for the number of cubic orders that have bounded discriminant and any given lattice shape (i.e., reduced trace form, up to scaling). Via a sieve, we also count cubic fields of bounded discriminant whose rings of integers have a given lattice shape. We find, in particular, that among cubic orders (resp. fields) having lattice shape of given discriminant $D$, the shape is equidistributed in the class group $\mathrm{Cl}_D$ of binary quadratic forms of discriminant $D$. As a by-product, we also obtain an asymptotic formula for the number of cubic fields of bounded discriminant having any given quadratic resolvent field.

We consider special maps from a symbolic compactum to a two-dimensional torus that connect a bidirectional translation with a given hyperbolic automorphism of a two-dimensional torus and preserve the maximum entropy measure. In contrast to the known geometric coding method with the aid of Markovian partitions (see references in [2] and [9]), the coding under consideration uses the arithmetic and group theoretic structure. This makes it possible to connect the arithmetic of the corresponding algebraic extension of Q and the properties of a certain binary quadratic form with the dynamics of the automorphism. The transformations can be parametrized by the units of the quadratic field or by the homoclinic points of some specific orbit. Let T be a hyperbolic automorphism ofT2 given by the matrixM = a b c d ∈ GL(2,Z). We put r = TrM,σ = detM,D = r2 − 4σ. Hyperbolicity implies that r 6= 0 for σ = −1, and |r| ≥ 3 for σ = +1. For simplicity, we shall assume that r > 0. Let λ = (r+ √ D)/2 be the greatest eigenvalue of M . As a symbolic compactum X we choose either a stationary Markov compactum Xr with state space 0,1, . . . , r and pairwise prohibitions {en = r ⇒ en+1 = 0, n ∈Z} for σ = −1, or a sofic compactumYr = {{en}−∞ : 0 ≤ en ≤ r−1, (en . . . en+s) 6= (r−1)(r−2)s−2(r−1) for any n ∈Z and any s ≥ 2} for σ = +1. Therefore, each of the two compacta is fully determined by the trace and is a β-compactum for β = λ (see [7]). Let τ denote a bidirectional translation on X, that is, (τe)n = en+1, and let μ be a measure of maximum entropy. We define the normalization operation as a map n : Q∞ −∞{0,1, . . . , 2r} → X such that if {xk} is a finite sequence, then n({xk}) = {ek} ′ l is the sequence of coefficients of a Markovian (sofic) β-decomposition with β = λ of the number x = P k xkλ −k. More precisely, l = [− logλ x] + 1, el = [λlx], ek = [λSk−l(λlx)], k > l, where Sx = {λx}. For an arbitrary sequence the normalization is defined as the weak limit of normalizations of finite approximations. On the well-posedness of this definition, see [4] and [9]. The sum of two sequences in X is defined to be the normalization of their coordinatewise sum. Similarly, one can define the inverse element with respect to addition. It can be shown that the sum and difference are defined for a.a. pairs of sequences under the measure μ×μ. After the natural arithmetic factorization mod 0, the maximum entropy measure p : X → X′ defines a group structure on the quotient space X′, with respect to which the translation τ is a group automorphism. We recall that a point s ∈T2 is said to be homoclinic to zero (briefly: homoclinic) if it belongs to the intersection of the leaves of the expanding and the contracting foliations passing through 0. Each homoclinic point s can be obtained in a unique way as the projection of a lattice point z(s) ∈ Z2 onto the one-dimensional eigenspace Lu corresponding to the eigenvalue λ along the other one-dimensional eigenspace Ls, followed by projection of the resulting point t = t(s) onto the torus (see [1]). The point t = t(s) will be called the plane coordinate of the homoclinic point s.