Approximating reals by sums of two rationals

We generalize Dirichlet's diophantine approximation theorem to approximating any real number $\alpha$ by a sum of two rational numbers $\frac{a_1}{q_1} + \frac{a_2}{q_2}$ with denominators $1 \leq q_1, q_2 \leq N$. This turns out to be related to the congruence equation problem $x y \equiv c \pmod q$ with $1 \leq x, y \leq q^{1/2 + \epsilon}$.Comment: 13 pages, improved results and some changes in the proof

On Taking Square Roots without Quadratic Nonresidues over Finite Fields

We present a novel idea to compute square roots over finite fields, without being given any quadratic nonresidue, and without assuming any unproven hypothesis. The algorithm is deterministic and the proof is elementary. In some cases, the square root algorithm runs in $\tilde{O}(\log^2 q)$ bit operations over finite fields with $q$ elements. As an application, we construct a deterministic primality proving algorithm, which runs in $\tilde{O}(\log^3 N)$ for some integers $N$.Comment: 14 page