Trace of totally positive algebraic integers and integer transfinite diameter

Abstract

Explicit auxiliary functions can be used in the “Schur-Siegel- Smyth trace problem”. In the previous works, these functions were constructed only with polynomials having all their roots positive. Here, we use several polynomials with complex roots, which are found with Wu’s algorithm, and we improve the known lower bounds for the absolute trace of totally positive algebraic integers. This improvement has a consequence for the search of Salem numbers that have a negative trace. The same method also gives a small improvement of the upper bound for the integer transfinite diameter of [0,1].