On the complexity of a putative counterexample to the $p$-adic Littlewood conjecture

Abstract

Let $|| \cdot ||$ denote the distance to the nearest integer and, for a prime number $p$, let $| \cdot |_p$ denote the $p$-adic absolute value. In 2004, de Mathan and Teuli\'e asked whether $\inf_{q \ge 1} \, q \cdot || q \alpha || \cdot | q |_p = 0$ holds for every badly approximable real number $\alpha$ and every prime number $p$. Among other results, we establish that, if the complexity of the sequence of partial quotients of a real number $\alpha$ grows too rapidly or too slowly, then their conjecture is true for the pair $(\alpha, p)$ with $p$ an arbitrary prime.