Square-free values of polynomials on average

Abstract

The number of square-free integers in $x$ consecutive values of any polynomial $f$ is conjectured to be $c_fx$, where the constant $c_f$ depends only on the polynomial $f$. This has been proven for degrees less or equal to 3. Granville was able to show conditionally on the $abc$-conjecture that this conjecture is true for polynomials of arbitrarily large degrees. In 2013 Shparlinski proved that this conjecture holds on average over all polynomials of a fixed naive height, which was improved by Browning and Shparlinski in 2023. In this paper, we improve the dependence between $x$ and the height of the polynomial. We achieve this via adapting a method introduced in a 2022 paper by Browning, Sofos, and Ter\"av\"ainen on the Bateman-Horn conjecture, the polynomial Chowla conjecture, and the Hasse principle on average.