The 8-rank of the narrow class group and the negative Pell equation

Abstract

Abstract Using a recent breakthrough of Smith [18], we improve the results of Fouvry and Klüners [4, 5] on the solubility of the negative Pell equation. Let $\mathcal {D}$ denote the set of positive squarefree integers having no prime factors congruent to $3$ modulo $4$ . Stevenhagen [19] conjectured that the density of d in $\mathcal {D}$ such that the negative Pell equation $x^2-dy^2=-1$ is solvable with $x, y \in \mathbb {Z}$ is $58.1\%$ , to the nearest tenth of a percent. By studying the distribution of the $8$ -rank of narrow class groups $\operatorname {\mathrm {Cl}}^+(d)$ of $\mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {d})$ , we prove that the infimum of this density is at least $53.8\%$ .