The purpose of this paper is to generalize some seminal results in the literature concerning the interrelationships between Legendre symbols and continued fractions. We introduce the power of ideal theory into the arena. This allows significant improvements over the existing results via the infrastructure of real quadratic fields.
We investigate and refine a device which we introduced in [3] for the study of continued fractions. This allows us to more easily compute the period lengths of certain continued fractions and it can be used to suggest some aspects of the cycle structure (see [1]) within the period of certain continued fractions related to underlying real quadratic fields.
It is well known that the continued fraction expansion of readily displays the midpoint of the principal cycle of ideals, that is, the point halfway to a solution of . Here we notice that, analogously, the point halfway to a solution of can be recognised. We explain what is going on.
2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary: 11D09, 11A55, 11C08, 11R11, 11R29; Secondary: 11R65, 11S40; 11R09. This paper contains proofs of conjectures made in [16] on class number 2 and what this author has dubbed the Euler-Rabinowitsch polynomial for real quadratic fields. As well, we complete the list of Richaud-Degert types given in [16] and show how the behaviour of the Euler-Rabinowitsch polynomials and certain continued fraction expansions come into play in the complete...
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