ROOTS OF UNITY AS QUOTIENTS OF TWO ROOTS OF A POLYNOMIAL

Abstract

AbstractLet K be a number field. For f∈K[x], we give an upper bound on the least positive integer T=T(f) such that no quotient of two distinct Tth powers of roots of f is a root of unity. For each ε>0 and each f∈ℚ[x] of degree d≥d(ε) we prove that $\log T(f)\lt (2+\varepsilon )\sqrt {d \log d}$. In the opposite direction, we show that the constant 2 cannot be replaced by a number smaller than 1 . These estimates are useful in the study of degenerate and nondegenerate linear recurrence sequences over a number field K.