Midpoint criteria for solving pell's equation using the nearest square continued fraction

Keith Matthews*, John Robertson, Jim White

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1 Citation (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We derive midpoint criteria for solving Pell's equation x2-Dy2 = ±1, using the nearest square continued fraction expansion of √D. The period of the expansion is on average 70% that of the regular continued fraction. We derive similar criteria for the diophantine equation x2 - xy - (D-1) 4 y2 = ±1, where D ≡ 1 (mod 4). We also present some numerical results and conclude with a comparison of the computational performance of the regular, nearest square and nearest integer continued fraction algorithms.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)485-499
    Number of pages15
    JournalMathematics of Computation
    Volume79
    Issue number269
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2010

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