On the Skolem problem and some related questions for parametric families of linear recurrence sequences

Abstract

Abstract We show that in a parametric family of linear recurrence sequences $a_1(\alpha ) f_1(\alpha )^n + \cdots + a_k(\alpha ) f_k(\alpha )^n$ with the coefficients $a_i$ and characteristic roots $f_i$ , $i=1, \ldots ,k$ , given by rational functions over some number field, for all but a set of elements $\alpha $ of bounded height in the algebraic closure of ${\mathbb Q}$ , the Skolem problem is solvable, and the existence of a zero in such a sequence can be effectively decided. We also discuss several related questions.