Transcendence of continued fractions over function fields and a quantitative version of Uchiyama's theorem

Abstract

Given a field $K$, let $K((T^{-1}))$ be the field of formal power series. Continued fractions in $K((T^{-1}))$ can be defined by analogy with classical real continued fractions and have been widely studied. Some results establish the transcendence of elements of $K((T^{-1}))$ arising from special families of continued fractions, but much remains to be explored. In this paper, assuming that $K$ has characteristic zero, we improve the known analogues of the Maillet--Baker criteria for quasi-periodic continued fractions. A central tool that we prove is a quantitative version of Uchiyama's analogue of Roth's theorem in function fields, which gives an explicit bound for the number of exceptionally good rational approximations to an algebraic power series. This quantitative estimate also yields a Davenport--Roth-type upper bound on the growth of the denominators of the convergents of algebraic elements. Finally, we prove that palindromic continued fractions are either quadratic or transcendental, as in the real case, but using a different proof strategy.