PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

In a totally real number field, every totally positive integral number is a finite sum of (additively) indecomposable totally positive integral numbers, and up to multiplication by totally positive units, there exist only finitely many indecomposables. In the paper it is shown that in quadratic fields all these numbers can be listed in a very efficient way by using the so-called intermediate convergents of a certain quadratic irrationality. The method can be viewed as a simple extension of the standard method of calculating the fundamental unit by using continued fractions. As an application it is shown that for instance in Z|√d| a number is decomposable if its norm is >d. It is remarkable that this bound does not depend on the size of the fundamental unit.