Sharpening Borel's result in Diophantine approximation

Abstract

In this paper, we refine Borel's 1903 result in Diophantine approximation by providing sharper bounds for the minimum of three consecutive approximation coefficients $\Theta_n(x)$, defined for any real number $x$ with regular continued fraction (RCF) expansion $x=[0;a_1,a_2,\dots]$ as $\Theta_n = q_n^2\left| x-\frac{p_n}{q_n}\right|$. Here $\frac{p_n}{q_n}$ is the $n$th RCF convergent of $x$. Borel's result states that for all (irrational) $x$ and all $n\in\mathbb{N}$, $$ \min \left\{ \Theta_{n-1}(x),\Theta_n(x),\Theta_{n+1}(x)\right\} \leq \frac{1}{\sqrt{5}}. $$ We focus on the situation where $a_{n+1}=1$, since otherwise a result by F.~Bagemihl and J.R.~McLaughlin from 1966 implies that the Borel-bound $1/\sqrt{5}$ can already be improver to $1/\sqrt{8}$.