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SMOOTH VALUES OF POLYNOMIALS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2019

J. W. BOBER*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, University Walk, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1TW, UK The Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research, Bristol, UK email j.bober@bristol.ac.uk
D. FRETWELL
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, University Walk, Clifton, BristolBS8 1TW, UK The Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research, Bristol, UK email daniel.fretwell@bristol.ac.uk
G. MARTIN
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Room 121, 1984 Mathematics Road, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 email gerg@math.ubc.ca
T. D. WOOLEY
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, University Walk, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1TW, UK email matdw@bristol.ac.uk

Abstract

Given $f\in \mathbb{Z}[t]$ of positive degree, we investigate the existence of auxiliary polynomials $g\in \mathbb{Z}[t]$ for which $f(g(t))$ factors as a product of polynomials of small relative degree. One consequence of this work shows that for any quadratic polynomial $f\in \mathbb{Z}[t]$ and any $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}>0$, there are infinitely many $n\in \mathbb{N}$ for which the largest prime factor of $f(n)$ is no larger than $n^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}}$.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2019 Australian Mathematical Publishing Association Inc.

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Footnotes

The third author’s work is partially supported by a National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant. The fourth author’s work is supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via grant agreement no. 695223.

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