Real zeros of Dedekind zeta functions of real quadratic fields

Let be a primitive, real and even Dirichlet character with conductor , and let be a positive real number. An old result of H. Davenport is that the cycle sums are all positive at and this has the immediate important consequence of the positivity of . We extend Davenport's idea to show that in fact for , for all with so that one can deduce the positivity of by the nonnegativity of a finite sum for any . A simple algorithm then allows us to prove numerically that has no positive real zero for a conductor up to 200,000, extending the previous record of 986 due to Rosser more than 50 years ago. We also derive various estimates explicit in of the as well as the shifted cycle sums considered previously by Leu and Li for . These explicit estimates are all rather tight and may have independent interests.