Introduction to Mahler Measure Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina July 23rd, 2003 Matilde N. Lal´ın{ University of Texas at Austin 1 1. Definition of Mahler Measure and Lehmer's question Looking for large primes, Pierce [18] proposed the following in 1918: Consider P 2 Z[x] monic, and write Y P (x) = (x − αi) i then, we look at Y n ∆n = (αi − 1) i Since the αi are integers and by applying Galois theory, it is easy to see that ∆n 2 Z. n Note that if P = x − 2, we get the sequence ∆n = 2 − 1. The idea is to look for primes among the factors of ∆n. The prime divisors of such integers must satify some congruence conditions that are quite restrictive, hence they are easier to factorize than a randomly given number. Moreover, one can show that ∆mj∆n if mjn. Then we may look at the numbers ∆ p p prime ∆1 In order to minimize the number of trial divisions, the sequence ∆n should grow slowly. Lehmer [15] studied ∆n+1 , observed that ∆n jαn+1 − 1j jαj if jαj > 1 lim = n!1 jαn − 1j 1 if jαj < 1 and suggested the following definition: Definition 1 Given P 2 C[x], such that Y P (x) = a (x − αi) i define the Mahler measure 2 of P as Y M(P ) = jaj maxf1; jαijg (1) i The logarithmic Mahler measure is defined as X + m(P ) = log M(P ) = log jaj + log jαij (2) i
[email protected] { http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mlalin 2The name Mahler came later after the person who successfully extended this definition to the several- variable case.