The Catalan Equation in Finitely Generated Domains

Abstract

We consider the Catalan equation $x^p-y^q=1$ in unknowns $x,y,p,q$, where $x,y$ are taken from an integral domain $A$ of characteristic $0$ that is finitely generated as a $\mathbb{Z}$-algebra and $p,q>1$ are integers. We give explicit upper bounds for $p$ and $q$ in terms of the defining parameters of $A$. Our main theorem is a more precise version of a result of Brindza. Brindza also gave inexplicit bounds for $p$ and $q$ in the special case that $A$ is the ring of $S$-integers for some number field $K$. As part of the proof of our main theorem, we will give a less technical proof for this special case with explicit upper bounds for $p$ and $q$.

Preprint, latest version to be published in Indagationes Mathematicae

References in corpus (1)

• An effective lower bound for the height of algebraic numbers