The distribution of Mahler's measures of reciprocal polynomials

We study the distribution of Mahler's measures of reciprocal polynomials with complex coefficients and bounded even degree. We discover that the distribution function associated to Mahler's measure restricted to monic reciprocal polynomials is a reciprocal (or anti-reciprocal) Laurent polynomial on [1,\infty) and identically zero on [0,1). Moreover, the coefficients of this Laurent polynomial are rational numbers times a power of \pi. We are led to this discovery by the computation of the Mellin transform of the distribution function. This Mellin transform is an even (or odd) rational function with poles at small integers and residues that are rational numbers times a power of \pi. We also use this Mellin transform to show that the volume of the set of reciprocal polynomials with complex coefficients, bounded degree and Mahler's measure less than or equal to one is a rational number times a power of \pi.Comment: 13 pages. To be published in Int. J. Math. Math. Sc

The Ginibre ensemble of real random matrices and its scaling limits

We give a closed form for the correlation functions of ensembles of a class of asymmetric real matrices in terms of the Pfaffian of an antisymmetric matrix formed from a $2 \times 2$ matrix kernel associated to the ensemble. We apply this result to the real Ginibre ensemble and compute the bulk and edge scaling limits of its correlation functions as the size of the matrices becomes large.Comment: 47 pages, 8 figure

Equidistribution of Algebraic Numbers of Norm One in Quadratic Number Fields

Given a fixed quadratic extension K of Q, we consider the distribution of elements in K of norm 1 (denoted N). When K is an imaginary quadratic extension, N is naturally embedded in the unit circle in C and we show that it is equidistributed with respect to inclusion as ordered by the absolute Weil height. By Hilbert's Theorem 90, an element in N can be written as \alpha/\bar{\alpha} for some \alpha \in O_K, which yields another ordering of \mathcal N given by the minimal norm of the associated algebraic integers. When K is imaginary we also show that N is equidistributed in the unit circle under this norm ordering. When K is a real quadratic extension, we show that N is equidistributed with respect to norm, under the map \beta \mapsto \log| \beta | \bmod{\log | \epsilon^2 |} where \epsilon is a fundamental unit of O_K.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, comments welcome

The reciprocal Mahler ensembles of random polynomials

We consider the roots of uniformly chosen complex and real reciprocal polynomials of degree N whose Mahler measure is bounded by a constant. After a change of variables, this reduces to a generalization of Ginibre’s complex and real ensembles of random matrices where the weight function (on the eigenvalues of the matrices) is replaced by the exponentiated equilibrium potential of the interval [−2,2] on the real axis in the complex plane. In the complex (real) case, the random roots form a determinantal (Pfaffian) point process, and in both cases, the empirical measure on roots converges weakly to the arcsine distribution supported on [−2,2]. Outside this region, the kernels converge without scaling, implying among other things that there is a positive expected number of outliers away from [−2,2]. These kernels as well as the scaling limits for the kernels in the bulk (−2,2) and at the endpoints {−2,2} are presented. These kernels appear to be new, and we compare their behavior with related kernels which arise from the (non-reciprocal) Mahler measure ensemble of random polynomials as well as the classical Sine and Bessel kernels