Problem #19

Hilbert's Tenth Problem over Q

Proof claimed!!!Very high impact — resolution would be of award-level significance

Is the following problem decidable? Given a polynomial p∈Q[x1,…,xn]p \in \mathbb{Q}[x_1, \ldots, x_n], determine whether pp has a rational root, i.e. a tuple (a1,…,an)∈Q(a_1, \ldots, a_n) \in \mathbb{Q} such that p(a1,…,an)=0p(a_1, \ldots, a_n) = 0.

Known Partial Results

Hilbert's 10th problem was to find a procedure which, given any polynomial p∈Z[x1,…,xn]p \in \mathbb{Z}[x_1,\ldots,x_n], would decide if pp has an integral root, i.e. a tuple (a1,…,an)∈Z(a_1, \ldots, a_n) \in \mathbb{Z} such that p(a1,…,an)=0p(a_1, \ldots, a_n) = 0. However, the MRDP (Matiyasevich, Robinson, Davis, and Putnam) Theorem states that there is no such computable procedure.

Given any countable ring RR with a computable presentation, one can ask a version of Hilbert's 10th problem over RR. Namely, is the following problem decidable: given a polynomial p∈R[x1,…,xn]p \in R[x_1, \ldots, x_n], determine whether pp has a root in RR? The answer to this question is known for several rings and open for others:

  • For R=Q‾R = \overline{\mathbb{Q}}, the algebraic closure of the rationals, the answer is yes, i.e. the problem is decidable. This follows from quantifier elimination for algebraically closed fields.
  • As stated above, for R=ZR = \mathbb{Z} the answer is no. This was proved by Matiyasevich [Mat70], building on work by Davis, Putnam and Robinson [DPR61].
  • Alpöge, Bhargava, Ho, and Shnidman [ABHS26] proved that if RR is the ring of integers of any number field then the answer is no.

Claimed Proofs

OpenAI has announced a proof that Hilbert's 10th problem over Q\mathbb{Q} is undecidable. See here.

Notes

This question is known to be equivalent to the question of whether there is a decision procedure for the problem of determining whether a variety over Q\mathbb{Q} has a rational point.

To give a negative answer to the question, it is enough to show that Z\mathbb{Z} is diophantine over Q\mathbb{Q}, i.e. that there is a polynomial p(x,y1,…,yn)p(x, y_1, \ldots, y_n) over Q\mathbb{Q} such that a∈Qa \in \mathbb{Q} is in Z\mathbb{Z} if and only if p(a,y1,…,yn)p(a, y_1, \ldots, y_n) has a rational root.

Reference for the problem statement

[Poo03]Bjorn Poonen, Hilbert's tenth problem and Mazur's conjecture for large subrings of Q, Journal of the American Mathematical Society, 2003 [doi]

Additional References

[ABHS26]Levent Alpöge, Manjul Bhargava, Wei Ho, and Ari Shnidman, Rank stability in quadratic extensions and Hilbert’s tenth problem for the ring of integers of a number field, Inventiones Mathematicae, 2026 [doi]

[Mat70]Yuri Matiyasevich, The Diophantineness of enumerable sets, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1970

[DPR61]Davis, Martin and Putnam, Hilary and Robinson, Julia, The decision problem for exponential diophantine equations, Annals of Mathematics, 1961 [doi]

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