Norms extremal with respect to the Mahler measure

Abstract

In a previous paper, the authors introduced several vector space norms on the space of algebraic numbers modulo torsion which corresponded to the Mahler measure on a certain class of numbers and allowed the authors to formulate L^p Lehmer conjectures which were equivalent to their classical counterparts. In this paper, we introduce and study several analogous norms which are constructed in order to satisfy an extremal property with respect to the Mahler measure. These norms are a natural generalization of the metric Mahler measure introduced by Dubickas and Smyth. We evaluate these norms on certain classes of algebraic numbers and prove that the infimum in the construction is achieved in a certain finite dimensional space.