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arXiv · 2104.15057

Small sums of five roots of unity

Ben Barber
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Abstract

Motivated by questions in number theory, Myerson asked how small the sum of 5 complex nth roots of unity can be. We obtain a uniform bound of O(n^{-4/3}) by perturbing the vertices of a regular pentagon, improving to O(n^{-7/3}) infinitely often. The corresponding configurations were suggested by examining exact minimum values computed for n <= 221000. These minima can be explained at least in part by selection of the best example from multiple families of competing configurations related to close rational approximations.

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Ben Barber. 2021-04-30. Small sums of five roots of unity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.15057

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