Login
example of transcendental number
The following is a classical application of Liouville's approximation theorem. For completeness, we state Liouville's result here:
Next we use the theorem to construct a transcendental number.
Suppose, for a contradiction, that $\psi$ is algebraic of degree $m$ . We will construct infinitely many rationals $p/q$ such that $$|\psi - \frac{p}{q}|< \frac{c}{q^m}$$ where $c=c(\psi)$ is the constant given by the theorem above. Let $k\in \Nats$ be such that $1/2^k < c$ . Then, in fact, we will show that there are infinitely many rationals $p/q$ with $q\geq 2$ such that $$|\psi -\frac{p}{q}|<\frac{1}{q^{m+k}}<\frac{1}{2^k}\cdot \frac{1}{q^m}<\frac{c}{q^m}$$ For all $j>k+m$ we define a rational number $p_j/q_j$ by: $$p_j=10^{j!}\sum_{n=1}^j 10^{-n!},\quad q_j=10^{j!}$$ then $p_j$ and $q_j$ are relatively prime integers and we have: \begin{eqnarray*} |\psi - \frac{p_j}{q_j}| & = & \sum_{n=j+1}^\infty \frac{1}{10^{n!}}\\ & < & \frac{1}{10^{(j+1)!}}(1+\frac{1}{10}+\frac{1}{10^2}+\ldots)\\ & = & 10/9\cdot \frac{1}{q_j^{(j+1)}} \\ & < & \frac{1}{q_j^j}\\ & < & \frac{1}{q_j^{(k+m)}} \end{eqnarray*}where in the last inequality we have used the fact that $j>k+m$ . Therefore, all rationals $\{ p_j/q_j \}_{j=k+m+1}^\infty$ satisfy the desired inequality, which leads to the contradiction with the theorem above. Thus $\psi$ cannot be algebraic and it must be transcendental. ![]()
Many other similar transcendental numbers can be constructed in this fashion.
