School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia ; Faculteit Wiskunde en Informatica, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Plantage Muidergracht 24, 1018 TV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract:
In order to study the density of the set of positive integers for which the negative Pell equation is solvable in integers, we compute the norm of the fundamental unit in certain well-chosen families of real quadratic orders. A fast algorithm that computes 2-class groups rather than units is used. It is random polynomial-time in as the factorization of is a natural part of the input for the values of we encounter. The data obtained provide convincing numerical evidence for the density heuristics for the negative Pell equation proposed by the second author. In particular, an irrational proportion of the real quadratic fields without discriminantal prime divisors congruent to 3 mod 4 should have a fundamental unit of norm .