Note on Egyptian fractions.
Some quadratic forms related to "greatest common divisor matrices" are represented in terms of L²-norms of rather simple functions. Our formula is especially useful when the size of the matrix grows, and we will study the asymptotic behaviour of the smallest and largest eigenvalues. Indeed, a sharp bound in terms of the zeta function is obtained. Our leading example is a hybrid between Hilbert's matrix and Smith's matrix.
The results of [2] on the congruence of Ankeny-Artin-Chowla type modulo p² for real subfields of of a prime degree l is simplified. This is done on the basis of a congruence for the Gauss period (Theorem 1). The results are applied for the quadratic field ℚ(√p), p ≡ 5 (mod 8) (Corollary 1).