On the minimal polynomial of Gauss periods for prime powers

For a positive integer , set and let denote the group of reduced residues modulo . Fix a congruence group of conductor and of order . Choose integers to represent the cosets of in . The Gauss periods

corresponding to are conjugate and distinct over with minimal polynomial

To determine the coefficients of the period polynomial (or equivalently, its reciprocal polynomial is a classical problem dating back to Gauss. Previous work of the author, and Gupta and Zagier, primarily treated the case , an odd prime, with fixed. In this setting, it is known for certain integral power series and , that for any positive integer

holds in for all primes except those in an effectively determinable finite set. Here we describe an analogous result for the case , a prime power ( ). The methods extend for odd prime powers to give a similar result for certain twisted Gauss periods of the form

where denotes the usual Legendre symbol and .

     

The Postage Stamp Problem: An algorithm to determine the

Given an integral ``stamp" basis with and a positive integer , we define the -range as

. For given and , the extremal basis has the largest possible extremal -range

We give an algorithm to determine the -range. We prove some properties of the -range formula, and we conjecture its form for the extremal -range. We consider parameter bases , where the basis elements are given functions of . For we conjecture the extremal parameter bases for .

     

Finding strong pseudoprimes to several bases. II

Define to be the smallest strong pseudoprime to all the first prime bases. If we know the exact value of , we will have, for integers , a deterministic efficient primality testing algorithm which is easy to implement. Thanks to Pomerance et al. and Jaeschke, the are known for . Upper bounds for were first given by Jaeschke, and those for were then sharpened by the first author in his previous paper (Math. Comp. 70 (2001), 863-872).

In this paper, we first follow the first author's previous work to use biquadratic residue characters and cubic residue characters as main tools to tabulate all strong pseudoprimes (spsp's) to the first five or six prime bases, which have the form with odd primes and ; then we tabulate all Carmichael numbers , to the first six prime bases up to 13, which have the form with each prime factor . There are in total 36 such Carmichael numbers, 12 numbers of which are also spsp's to base 17; 5 numbers are spsp's to bases 17 and 19; one number is an spsp to the first 11 prime bases up to 31. As a result the upper bounds for and are lowered from 20- and 22-decimal-digit numbers to a 19-decimal-digit number:

We conjecture that

and give reasons to support this conjecture. The main idea for finding these Carmichael numbers is that we loop on the largest prime factor and propose necessary conditions on to be a strong pseudoprime to the first prime bases. Comparisons of effectiveness with Arnault's, Bleichenbacher's, Jaeschke's, and Pinch's methods for finding (Carmichael) numbers with three prime factors, which are strong pseudoprimes to the first several prime bases, are given.

     

Some computations on the spectra of Pisot and Salem numbers

Properties of Pisot numbers have long been of interest. One line of questioning, initiated by Erdos, Joó and Komornik in 1990, is the determination of for Pisot numbers , where

Although the quantity is known for some Pisot numbers , there has been no general method for computing . This paper gives such an algorithm. With this algorithm, some properties of and its generalizations are investigated.

A related question concerns the analogy of , denoted , where the coefficients are restricted to ; in particular, for which non-Pisot numbers is nonzero? This paper finds an infinite class of Salem numbers where .

     

Random Fibonacci sequences and the number

For the familiar Fibonacci sequence (defined by , and for ), increases exponentially with at a rate given by the golden ratio . But for a simple modification with both additions and subtractions - the random Fibonacci sequences defined by , and for , , where each sign is independent and either or - with probability - it is not even obvious if should increase with . Our main result is that

with probability . Finding the number involves the theory of random matrix products, Stern-Brocot division of the real line, a fractal measure, a computer calculation, and a rounding error analysis to validate the computer calculation.

     

Finite SAGBI bases for polynomial invariants of conjugates of alternating groups

It is well-known, that the ring of polynomial invariants of the alternating group has no finite SAGBI basis with respect to the lexicographical order for any number of variables . This note proves the existence of a nonsingular matrix such that the ring of polynomial invariants , where denotes the conjugate of with respect to , has a finite SAGBI basis for any .     

An infinite family of bounds on zeros of analytic functions and relationship to Smale's bound

Smale's analysis of Newton's iteration function induce a lower bound on the gap between two distinct zeros of a given complex-valued analytic function . In this paper we make use of a fundamental family of iteration functions , , to derive an infinite family of lower bounds on the above gap. However, even for , where coincides with Newton's, our lower bound is more than twice as good as Smale's bound or its improved version given by Blum, Cucker, Shub, and Smale. When is a complex polynomial of degree , for small the corresponding bound is computable in arithmetic operations. For quadratic polynomials, as increases the lower bounds converge to the actual gap. We show how to use these bounds to compute lower bounds on the distance between an arbitrary point and the nearest root of . In particular, using the latter result, we show that, given a complex polynomial , , for each we can compute upper and lower bounds and such that the roots of lie in the annulus . In particular, , ; and , , where . An application of the latter bounds is within Weyl's classical quad-tree algorithm for computing all roots of a given complex polynomial.

     

Computing

Let denote the Von Mangoldt function and . We describe an elementary method for computing isolated values of . The complexity of the algorithm is time and space. A table of values of for up to is included, and some times of computation are given.

     

Continued fractions in local fields, II

The present paper is a continuation of an earlier work by the author. We propose some new definitions of -adic continued fractions. At the end of the paper we give numerical examples illustrating these definitions. It turns out that for every if then has a periodic continued fraction expansion. The same is not true in for some larger values of

     

Analysis of PSLQ, an integer relation finding algorithm

Let be either the real, complex, or quaternion number system and let be the corresponding integers. Let be a vector in . The vector has an integer relation if there exists a vector , , such that . In this paper we define the parameterized integer relation construction algorithm PSLQ, where the parameter can be freely chosen in a certain interval. Beginning with an arbitrary vector , iterations of PSLQ will produce lower bounds on the norm of any possible relation for . Thus PSLQ can be used to prove that there are no relations for of norm less than a given size. Let be the smallest norm of any relation for . For the real and complex case and each fixed parameter in a certain interval, we prove that PSLQ constructs a relation in less than iterations.

     

Linear difference equations with transition points

Two linearly independent asymptotic solutions are constructed for the second-order linear difference equation

where and have power series expansions of the form

with . Our results hold uniformly for in an infinite interval containing the transition point given by . As an illustration, we present an asymptotic expansion for the monic polynomials which are orthogonal with respect to the modified Jacobi weight , , where , -1$"> and is real analytic and strictly positive on .

     

On the iteratively regularized Gauss-Newton method for solving nonlinear ill-posed problems

The iteratively regularized Gauss-Newton method is applied to compute the stable solutions to nonlinear ill-posed problems when the data is given approximately by with . In this method, the iterative sequence is defined successively by

where is an initial guess of the exact solution and is a given decreasing sequence of positive numbers admitting suitable properties. When is used to approximate , the stopping index should be designated properly. In this paper, an a posteriori stopping rule is suggested to choose the stopping index of iteration, and with the integer determined by this rule it is proved that

with a constant independent of , where denotes the iterative solution corresponding to the noise free case. As a consequence of this result, the convergence of is obtained, and moreover the rate of convergence is derived when satisfies a suitable ``source-wise representation". The results of this paper suggest that the iteratively regularized Gauss-Newton method, combined with our stopping rule, defines a regularization method of optimal order for each . Numerical examples for parameter estimation of a differential equation are given to test the theoretical results.

     

Newton-Cotes integration for approximating Stieltjes (generalized Euler) constants

In the Laurent expansion

of the Riemann-Hurwitz zeta function, the coefficients are known as Stieltjes, or generalized Euler, constants. [When , (the Riemann zeta function), and .] We present a new approach to high-precision approximation of . Plots of our results reveal much structure in the growth of the generalized Euler constants. Our results when for , and when for (for such as 53/100, 1/2, etc.) suggest that published bounds on the growth of the Stieltjes constants can be much improved, and lead to several conjectures. Defining , we conjecture that is attained: for any given , for some (and similarly that, given and , is within of for infinitely many ). In addition we conjecture that satisfies for 1$">. We also conjecture that , a special case of a more general conjecture relating the values of and for . Finally, it is known that for . Using this to define for all real 0$">, we conjecture that for nonintegral , is precisely times the -th (Weyl) fractional derivative at of the entire function . We also conjecture that , now defined for all real arguments 0$">, is smooth. Our numerical method uses Newton-Cotes integration formulae for very high-degree interpolating polynomials; it differs in implementation from, but compares in error bounding to, Euler-Maclaurin summation based methods.

     

Finding -strong pseudoprimes

Let be odd primes and . Put

Then we call the kernel, the triple the signature, and the height of , respectively. We call a -number if it is a Carmichael number with each prime factor . If is a -number and a strong pseudoprime to the bases for , we call a -spsp . Since -numbers have probability of error (the upper bound of that for the Rabin-Miller test), they often serve as the exact values or upper bounds of (the smallest strong pseudoprime to all the first prime bases). If we know the exact value of , we will have, for integers , a deterministic efficient primality testing algorithm which is easy to implement.

In this paper, we first describe an algorithm for finding -spsp(2)'s, to a given limit, with heights bounded. There are in total -spsp's with heights . We then give an overview of the 21978 - spsp(2)'s and tabulate of them, which are -spsp's to the first prime bases up to ; three numbers are spsp's to the first 11 prime bases up to 31. No -spsp's to the first prime bases with heights were found. We conjecture that there exist no -spsp's to the first prime bases with heights and so that

which was found by the author in an earlier paper. We give reasons to support the conjecture. The main idea of our method for finding those -spsp's is that we loop on candidates of signatures and kernels with heights bounded, subject those candidates of -spsp's and their prime factors to Miller's tests, and obtain the desired numbers. At last we speed our algorithm for finding larger -spsp's, say up to , with a given signature to more prime bases. Comparisons of effectiveness with Arnault's and our previous methods for finding -strong pseudoprimes to the first several prime bases are given.

     

Asymptotic estimation of Gaussian quadrature error for a nonsingular integral in potential theory

This paper considers the -point Gauss-Jacobi approximation of nonsingular integrals of the form , with Jacobi weight and polynomial , and derives an estimate for the quadrature error that is asymptotic as . The approach follows that previously described by Donaldson and Elliott. A numerical example illustrating the accuracy of the asymptotic estimate is presented. The extension of the theory to similar integrals defined on more general analytic arcs is outlined.

     

Stability of Runge-Kutta methods for abstract time-dependent parabolic problems: The Hölder case

We consider an abstract time-dependent, linear parabolic problem

where , , is a family of sectorial operators in a Banach space with time-independent domain . This problem is discretized in time by means of an A() strongly stable Runge-Kutta method, . We prove that the resulting discretization is stable, under the assumption

where and . Our results are applicable to the analysis of parabolic problems in the , , norms.

     

Error bounds on complex floating-point multiplication

Given floating-point arithmetic with -digit base- significands in which all arithmetic operations are performed as if calculated to infinite precision and rounded to a nearest representable value, we prove that the product of complex values and can be computed with maximum absolute error . In particular, this provides relative error bounds of and for IEEE 754 single and double precision arithmetic respectively, provided that overflow, underflow, and denormals do not occur.

We also provide the numerical worst cases for IEEE 754 single and double precision arithmetic.

     

A hidden number problem in small subgroups

Boneh and Venkatesan have proposed a polynomial time algorithm for recovering a hidden element , where is prime, from rather short strings of the most significant bits of the residue of modulo for several randomly chosen . González Vasco and the first author have recently extended this result to subgroups of of order at least for all and to subgroups of order at least for almost all . Here we introduce a new modification in the scheme which amplifies the uniformity of distribution of the multipliers and thus extend this result to subgroups of order at least for all primes . As in the above works, we give applications of our result to the bit security of the Diffie-Hellman secret key starting with subgroups of very small size, thus including all cryptographically interesting subgroups.

     

Efficient CM-constructions of elliptic curves over finite fields

We present an algorithm that, on input of an integer together with its prime factorization, constructs a finite field and an elliptic curve over for which has order . Although it is unproved that this can be done for all , a heuristic analysis shows that the algorithm has an expected run time that is polynomial in , where is the number of distinct prime factors of . In the cryptographically relevant case where is prime, an expected run time can be achieved. We illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm by constructing elliptic curves with point groups of order and nextprime.

     

Stability of Runge-Kutta methods for quasilinear parabolic problems

We consider a quasilinear parabolic problem

where , , is a family of sectorial operators in a Banach space with fixed domain . This problem is discretized in time by means of a strongly A()-stable, , Runge-Kutta method. We prove that the resulting discretization is stable, under some natural assumptions on the dependence of with respect to . Our results are useful for studying in norms, , many problems arising in applications. Some auxiliary results for time-dependent parabolic problems are also provided.