EDIT: Hendrik Lenstra emailed me a proof of Conjecture 2. I'll append it below. So Jagy's question is now solved. ______________________________________________________________________________________ OK so I think that Jagy wants to make the following conjecture: CONJECTURE 1: an integer $C$ is not representable by the form F(x,y,z)=2x^2+xy+3y^2+z^3-z if, and only if, $C$ is odd and $27C^2-4=23D^2$ with $D$ an integer. [EDIT/clarification: Jagy only asks one direction of the iff in his question, and this answer below gives a complete answer to the question Jagy asks. I came back to this question recently though [I am writing this para a year after I wrote the original answer] and tried to fill in the details of the argument in the other direction (proving that if C was not an odd integer solution to $27C^2-4=23D^2$ then $C$ was represented by the form) and I failed. So the "hole" I flag in the answer below still really is a hole, and this post still remains an answer to Jagy's question, but not a complete proof of Conjecture 1, which should still be regarded as open.] I have a proof strategy for this. I am too lazy to fill in some of the details though, so maybe a bit of it doesn't work, but it should be OK. However, I am also reliant on a much easier-looking conjecture (which I've tested numerically so should be fine, but I can't see why it's true): CONJECTURE 2: if $C$ is odd and $27C^2-4=23D^2$, then there's no prime p dividing D of the form $2x^2+xy+3y^2$. So I am claiming Conj 2 implies the "only if" version of Conj 1. I don't know how to prove Conj 2 but it looks very accessible [edit: I do now; see below]. Note that the Pell equation is related to units in $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{69})$ and the $2x^2+xy+3y^2$ is related to factorization in $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$. I've seen other results relating the arithmetic of $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{D})$ and $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-3D})$. ________________________________________________________________________ Ok, so assuming Conjecture 2, let me sketch a proof of the "only if" part of Conjecture 1. The Pell equation is intimately related to the recurrence relation $$t_{n+2}=25t_{n+1}-t_n$$ with various initial conditions. For example the positive $C$s which are solutions to $27C^2-4=23D^2$ are all generated by this recurrence starting at $C_1=C_2=1$, and the $D$s are all generated by the same recurrence with $D_1=-1$ and $D_2=1$. Note that $C_n$ is even iff $n$ is a multiple of 3, and (by solving the recurrence explicitly) one checks easily that $C_{3n}=(3C_{n+1})^3-(3C_{n+1})$, so we've represented the even solutions to the Pell equation as values of $F$ (with $x=y=0$). Let's then consider the odd solutions to the Pell equation. Say $C$ is one of these. We want to prove that there is no solution in integers $x,y,z$ to $$2x^2+xy+3y^2=z^3-z+C.$$ Let's do it by contradiction. Consider the polynomial $Z^3-Z+C$. First I claim it's irreducible. This is because it is monic, of degree 3, and has no integer root, because $C$ is odd. Next I claim that the splitting field contains $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$. This is because of our Pell assumption and the fact that the discriminant of $Z^3-Z+C$ is $4-27C^2$. Next I claim that the splitting field of $Z^3-Z+C$ is in fact the Hilbert class field of $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$. I only know an ugly way of seeing this: if $\theta$ is a root of $Z^3-Z+1=0$ then I know recurrence relations $e_n$, $f_n$ and $g_n$ (all defined using the relation above but with different initial conditions) with $e_n\theta^2+f_n\theta+g_n$ a root of $Z^3-Z+C_{3n+1}$, and other relations giving roots of $Z^3-Z+C_{3n+2}$ and $Z^3-Z-C_{3n+1}$ and $Z^3-Z-C_{3n+2}$. Most unenlightening but it does the job because it embeds $\mathbf{Q}(\theta)$ into the splitting field, and the Galois closure of $\mathbf{Q}(\theta)$ is the Hilbert class field of $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$. Right, now for the contradiction, assuming Conjecture 2. Let's assume that $C$ is a solution to the Pell, and $z^3-z+C$ can be written $2x^2+xy+3y^2$. Now $C$ is odd so $z^3-z+C$ isn't zero, and hence it's positive, so it's the norm of a non-principal ideal~$I$ in the integers $R$ of $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$. This ideal $I$ is a product of prime ideals, and $I$ isn't principal, so one of the prime ideals had better also not be principal. Say this prime ideal has norm $p$. We conclude that $p$ divides $z^3-z+C$ and $p$ is of the form $2x^2+xy+3y^2$. Note in particular that this implies $p\not=23$. Also $p\not=3$, because $C$ is odd and (because of general Pell stuff) hence prime to 3. CASE 1: $p$ is coprime to $D^2$ (with $27C^2-4=23D^2$). In this case the polynomial $Z^3-Z+C$ has non-zero discriminant mod $p$ (because $p\not=23$) and furthermore has a root $Z=z$ mod $p$. Hence mod $p$ the polynomial either splits as the product of a linear and a quadratic, or the product of three linears. This tells us something about the factorization of $p$ in the splitting field of $Z^3-Z+C$: either $p$ remains inert in $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$, or it splits into 6 primes in the splitting field and hence splits into two principal primes in $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$ (because the principal primes are the ones that split completely in the Hilbert class field). In either case $p$ can't be of the form $2x^2+xy+3y^2$, so this case is done. CASE 2: This is simply Conjecture 2. In both cases we have our contradiction, and so we have proved, so far, assuming Conjecture 2, that a solution $C$ to $27C^2-4=23D^2$ is representable as $2x^2+xy+3y^2+z^3-z$ iff it's even. Note that Conjecture 2 can be verified by computer for explicit values of $C$, giving unconditional results---for example I checked in just a few seconds that any odd $C$ with $|C|<10^{72}$ and satisfying the Pell equation was not representable by the form, and that result does not rely on anything. At least that's something concrete for Jagy. ________________________________________________________________________ OK so what about the other way: say $27C^2-4$ is not 23 times a square. How to go about representing $C$ by our form? Well, here I am going to be much vaguer because there are issues I am simply too tired to deal with (and note that this is not the question that Jagy asked anyway). Here's the idea. Look at the proof of Theorem 2 in Jagy's pdf Mordell.pdf. Here Mordell gives a general algorithm to represent certain integers by (quadratic in two variables) + (cubic in one variable). If you apply it not to the form we're interested in, but to the following equation: $$x^2+xy+6y^2=z^3-z+C$$ then, I didn't check all the details, but I convinced myself that they could easily be checked if I had another hour or two, but I think that the techniques show that whatever the value of $C$ is, this equation has a solution. The idea is to fix $C$, let $\theta$ be a root of the cubic on the right (which we can assume is irreducible, as if it were reducible then we get a solution with $x=y=0$), to rewrite the right hand side as $N_{F/\mathbf{Q}}(z-\theta)$, with $F=\mathbf{Q}(\theta)$ and now to try and write $z-\theta$ as $G^2+GH+2H^2$ with $G,H\in\mathbf{Z}[\theta]$. Mordell does this explicitly (in a slightly different case) in the pdf. The arguments come out the same though, and we end up having to check that a certain cubic in four variables has a solution modulo~23 with a certain property. I'll skip the painful details. The cubic depends on $C$ mod 23, and so a computer calculation can deal with all 23 cases. Once this is done properly we have a solution to $x^2+xy+6y^2=z^3-z+C$, so we have written $z^3-z+C$ as the norm of a principal ideal in the integers of $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$. What we need to do now is to write it as the norm of a non-principal ideal, and of course we'll be able to do this if we can find some prime $p$ dividing $z^3-z+C$ which splits in $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$ into two non-principal primes, because then we replace one of the prime divisors above $p$ in our ideal by the other one. What we need then is to show that if the discriminant of $z^3-z+C$ is not $-23$ times a square, then there _is_ some prime $p$ of the form $2x^2+xy+3y^2$ dividing some number of the form $z^3-z+C$ which is the norm of a principal ideal. This should follow from the Cebotarev density theorem, because Mordell's methods construct a huge number of solutions to $x^2+xy+6y^2=z^3-z+C$ which are "only constrained modulo 23", and so one should presumably be able to find a prime which splits in $\mathbf{Q}(\sqrt{-23})$, splits completely in the splitting field of $z^3-z+C$ and doesn't split completely in the splitting field of $z^3-z+1$. I have run out of energy to deal with this point however, so again there is a hole here. This issue seems analytic to me, and I am not much of an analytic guy. [edit: I came back to this question a year later and couldn't do it, so this should not be regarded as a proof of the "if" part of Conj 1] __________________________________________________________________________________ EDIT: OK so here, verbatim, is an email from Lenstra in which he establishes Conjecture 2. (EDIT: dollar signs added - GM) Fact. Let $\theta$ be a zero of $X^3-X+1$, let $\eta$ in ${\bf Z}[\theta]$ be a zero of $X^3-X+C$ with $C$ in $\bf Z$ odd, and let $p$ be a prime number that is inert in ${\bf Z}[\theta]$. Then $p$ does not divide index$({\bf Z}[\theta]:{\bf Z}[\eta])$. Proof. By hypothesis, ${\bf Z}[\theta]/p{\bf Z}[\theta]$ is a field of size $p^3$. Let $e$ be the image of $\eta$ in that field. Since $X^3-X+C$ is irreducible in ${\bf Z}[X]$ (even mod 2), it is the characteristic polynomial of $\eta$ over $\bf Z$. Hence its reduction mod $p$ is the characteristic polynomial of $e$ over ${\bf Z}/p{\bf Z}$. If now $e$ is in ${\bf Z}/p{\bf Z}$, then that characteristic polynomial also equals $(X-e)^3$, so that in ${\bf Z}/p{\bf Z}$ we have $3e = 0$ and $3e^2 = -1$, a contradiction. Hence $e$ is not in ${\bf Z}/p{\bf Z}$, so $({\bf Z}/p{\bf Z})[e] = {\bf Z}[\theta]/p{\bf Z}[\theta]$, which is the same as saying ${\bf Z}[\theta] = {\bf Z}[\eta] + p{\bf Z}[\theta]$. Then $p$ acts surjectively on the finite abelian group ${\bf Z}[\theta]/{\bf Z}[\eta]$, so the order of that group is not divisible by $p$. End of proof.