Approximations of Algebraic Irrationalities with Matrices

Abstract

We discuss the use of matrices for providing sequences of rationals that approximate algebraic irrationalities. In particular, we study the regular representation of algebraic extensions, proving that ratios between two entries of the matrix of the regular representation converge to specific algebraic irrationalities. As an interesting special case, we focus on cubic irrationalities giving a generalization of the Khovanskii matrices for approximating cubic irrationalities. We discuss the quality of such approximations considering both rate of convergence and size of denominators. Moreover, we briefly perform a numerical comparison with well-known iterative methods (such as Newton and Halley ones), showing that the approximations provided by regular representations appear more accurate for the same size of the denominator.