I was not sure whether your question was mathematical or
computational.  Usually "Pell equation" means the +1 equation and ones
says "negative Pell equation" for the -1 version.  (I once wrote a
paper "On the negative Pell equation"!).  As Vincent says if you have
a solution x+y*sqrt(d) to the negative equation, square it to get a
solution to the positive equation.

But perhaps you just meant that the instructions were confusing?

John Cremona

On 1 November 2014 21:40, Vincent Delecroix <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> First of all, I was not able to run your code. It fails on the line
>
>  sage: L = [list(u^i) for i in [0..3]]
>
> Hopefully, with list(K(u^i)) instead of list(u^i) it works fine.
>
> I did not check the reference but the units of a quadratic number
> fields are the solution of Pell equation with either 1 or -1 (which
> are the invertible elements in Z). And actually, the subgroup of
> solutions which corresponds to 1 always form a subgroup (which is
> either the whole group or a subgroup of index 2). As you can see with
> the same example, taking the square of a solution with -1 you get 1
> because the norm is multiplicative
>
> sage: x,y = K(u)
> sage: x^2-1621*y^2
> -1
> sage: K(u).norm()
> -1
>
> sage: x,y = K(u)**2
> sage: x^2-1621*y^2
> 1
> sage: K(u**2).norm()
> 1
>
> I am not sure it solves the issue from the reference.
>
> Vincent
>
> 2014-10-31 10:14 UTC−06:00, Michael Beeson <[email protected]>:
>> Here I attempt to solve Pell's equation with d = 1621 following the method
>> on page 93 of Stein's book.
>> But the solution produced is instead a solution of the negative Pell
>> equation x^2-y^2 = -1  (instead of 1).
>> Actually, the example on page 93 (after correcting the typo "v" to "u") has
>>
>> the same problem:  it claims
>> that [-2,1]  solves Pell's equation with d=5,  whereas, it really solves
>> the negative Pell equation.
>>
>> sage: K.<a> = QuadraticField(1621)
>> sage: G = K.unit_group()
>> sage: u = G.1
>> sage: L = [list(u^i) for i in [0..3]]
>> sage: L
>> [[1, 0], [4823622127875/2, 119806883557/2], [23267330432525342852015627/2,
>> 577903134597288688851375/2], [56116404965454319198851772383057215250,
>> 1393793173905903098261469193463230841]]
>> sage: x = L[2][0];
>> sage: y = L[2][1];
>> sage: x
>> 23267330432525342852015627/2
>> sage: x = L[3][0];
>> sage: y = L[3][1];
>> sage: x
>> 56116404965454319198851772383057215250
>> sage: y
>> 1393793173905903098261469193463230841
>> sage: x^2-1621*y^2
>> -1
>>
>>
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