On effective computation of fundamental units. I

Abstract

The new method for efficient computation of the fundamental units of an algebraic number field developed by the authors in an earlier paper is considerably improved with respect to (Section 1) utilization to best advantage of the element of choice inherent in the method and the mastery of the linear programming techniques involved, (Section 2) ideal factorization, and (Section 3) the determination of sharper upper bounds for the index of U ε {U_\varepsilon } in U F {U_F} .