Quadratic Irrationals by Franz Halter-Koch - 9781032919973

Quadratic IrrationalsAn Introduction to Classical Number Theory\nAuthor(s): Franz Halter-Koch\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Chapman & Hall/CRC\nISBN-13: 9781032919973, 978-1032919973\nSynopsis\nQuadratic Irrationals: An Introduction to Classical Number Theory gives a unified treatment of the classical theory of quadratic irrationals. Presenting the material in a modern and elementary algebraic setting, the author focuses on equivalence, continued fractions, quadratic characters, quadratic orders, binary quadratic forms, and class groups.\n\nThe book highlights the connection between Gausss theory of binary forms and the arithmetic of quadratic orders. It collects essential results of the theory that have previously been difficult to access and scattered in the literature, including binary quadratic Diophantine equations and explicit continued fractions, biquadratic class group characters, the divisibility of class numbers by 16,.