On periodicity of geodesic continued fractions

Abstract

In this paper, we present some generalizations of Lagrange's theorem in the classical theory of continued fractions motivated by the geometric interpretation of the classical theory in terms of closed geodesics on the modular curve. As a result, for an extension $F/F'$ of number fields with rank one relative unit group, we construct a geodesic multi-dimensional continued fraction algorithm to "expand" any basis of $F$ over $\mathbb{Q}$, and prove its periodicity. Furthermore, we show that the periods describe the relative unit group. By developing the above argument adelically, we also obtain a $p$-adelic continued fraction algorithm and its periodicity for imaginary quadratic irrationals.