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Bugeaud Collection of Conjectures and Open Questions: Fractional Parts of Powers
Chapter 10 of the book collects open questions. This file formalizes Problems 10.1,
10.2, 10.3 and the unnumbered conjecture by Waldschmidt.
References:
[Bug12] Bugeaud, Yann. "Distribution modulo one and Diophantine approximation."
Vol. 193. Cambridge University Press, 2012. Chapter 10.
[Har19] Hardy, Gr H. "A problem of Diophantine approximation."
J. Indian Math. Soc 11 (1919): 162-166.
[Kok45] Koksma, J. F. "Sur la théorie métrique des approximations diophantiques."
Indag. Math 7 (1945): 54-70.
[Mah53] Mahler, Kurt. "On the approximation of logarithms of algebraic numbers."
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A,
Mathematical and Physical Sciences 245.898 (1953): 371-398.
Wal03
Waldschmidt, Michel. "Linear independence measures for logarithms of algebraic numbers."
Diophantine Approximation: Lectures given at the CIME Summer School held in Cetraro, Italy,
June 28–July 6, 2000. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2003. 249-344.
namespaceBugeaud01
Problem 10.1. Are there a transcendental number $\alpha$ and a positive real
number $\xi$ such that $\lVert \xi \alpha^n \rVert$ tends to~$0$ as~$n$ tends to infinity? [Har19]
(Trivial for $|\alpha| < 1$)
Problem 10.3. To prove that there exists a positive real number~$c$ such
that $\lVert e^n \rVert > e^{−cn}$, for every~$n \ge 1$. Posed by Mahler [Mah53].
Waldschmidt [Wal03] conjectured that a stronger result holds, namely
that there exists a positive real number~$c$ such that $\lVert e^n \rVert > n^{-c}$ for
every~$n \ge 2$. This is supported by metrical results [Kok45].
Note: the bound $n^{-c}$ equals $1$ when $n = 1$ for all $c$, while the distance to the nearest
integer is always at most $1/2$, so the conjecture must start at $n \ge 2$.
Waldschmidt's conjecture is stronger than Mahler's: since $\log n \le n$ for $n \ge 1$,
the polynomial lower bound $n^{-c}$ dominates the exponential lower bound $e^{-cn}$.
For the $n = 1$ case (not covered by Waldschmidt's $n \ge 2$), we choose a larger constant
using the numerical bound $\lVert e \rVert = 3 - e > 0$.