The distribution of class numbers in a special family of real quadratic fields

Abstract

We investigate the distribution of class numbers in the family of real quadratic fields Q ( d ) \mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {d}) corresponding to fundamental discriminants of the form d = 4 m 2 + 1 d=4m^2+1 , which we refer to as Chowla’s family. Our results show a strong similarity between the distribution of class numbers in this family and that of class numbers of imaginary quadratic fields. As an application of our results, we prove that the average order of the number of quadratic fields in Chowla’s family with class number h h is ( log ⁡ h ) / 2 G (\log h)/2G , where G G is Catalan’s constant. With minor modifications, one can obtain similar results for Yokoi’s family of real quadratic fields Q ( d ) \mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {d}) , which correspond to fundamental discriminants of the form d = m 2 + 4 d=m^2+4 .