Counting principal ideals of small norm in the simplest cubic fields

Abstract

We estimate the number of principal ideals $ I $ of norm $ \mathrm{N}(I) \leq x $ in the family of the simplest cubic fields. The advantage of our result is that it provides the correct order of magnitude for arbitrary $ x \geq 1 $, even when $ x $ is significantly smaller than the discriminant. In particular, it shows that there exist surprisingly many principal ideals of small norm.