Some experiments with Ramanujan-Nagell type Diophantine equations

Stiller proved that the Diophantine equation $x^2+119=15\cdot 2^{n}$ has exactly six solutions in positive integers. Motivated by this result we are interested in constructions of Diophantine equations of Ramanujan-Nagell type $x^2=Ak^{n}+B$ with many solutions. Here, $A,B\in\Z$ (thus $A, B$ are not necessarily positive) and $k\in\Z_{\geq 2}$ are given integers. In particular, we prove that for each $k$ there exists an infinite set $\cal{S}$ containing pairs of integers $(A, B)$ such that for each $(A,B)\in \cal{S}$ we have $\gcd(A,B)$ is square-free and the Diophantine equation $x^2=Ak^n+B$ has at least four solutions in positive integers. Moreover, we construct several Diophantine equations of the form $x^2=Ak^n+B$ with $k>2$, each containing five solutions in non-negative integers. %For example the equation $y^2=130\cdot 3^{n}+5550606$ has exactly five solutions with $n=0, 6, 11, 15, 16$. We also find new examples of equations $x^2=A2^{n}+B$ having six solutions in positive integers, e.g. the following Diophantine equations has exactly six solutions: \begin{equation*} \begin{array}{ll} x^2= 57\cdot 2^{n}+117440512 & n=0, 14, 16, 20, 24, 25, x^2= 165\cdot 2^{n}+26404 & n=0, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12. \end{array} \end{equation*} Moreover, based on an extensive numerical calculations we state several conjectures on the number of solutions of certain parametric families of the Diophantine equations of Ramanujan-Nagell type.Comment: 14 pages, to appear in Galsnik Matematick

Heights and quadratic forms: on Cassels' theorem and its generalizations

In this survey paper, we discuss the classical Cassels' theorem on existence of small-height zeros of quadratic forms over Q and its many extensions, to different fields and rings, as well as to more general situations, such as existence of totally isotropic small-height subspaces. We also discuss related recent results on effective structural theorems for quadratic spaces, as well as Cassels'-type theorems for small-height zeros of quadratic forms with additional conditions. We conclude with a selection of open problems.Comment: 16 pages; to appear in the proceedings of the BIRS workshop on "Diophantine methods, lattices, and arithmetic theory of quadratic forms", to be published in the AMS Contemporary Mathematics serie

On the Quantitative Subspace Theorem

In this survey we give an overview of recent developments on the Quantitative Subspace Theorem. In particular, we discuss a new upper bound for the number of subspaces containing the "large" solutions, obtained jointly with Roberto Ferretti, and sketch the proof of the latter. Further, we prove a new gap principle to handle the "small" solutions in the system of inequalities considered in the Subspace Theorem. Finally, we go into the refinement of the Subspace Theorem by Faltings and Wuestholz, which states that the system of inequalities considered has only finitely many solutions outside some effectively determinable proper linear subspace of the ambient solution space. Estimating the number of these solutions is still an open problem. We give some motivation that this problem is very hard.Comment: 26 page