An improved bound in Wirsing's problem

Abstract: We improve the lower bound for the classical exponent of approximation $w_{n}^{\ast}(\xi)$ connected to Wirsing's famous problem of approximation to real numbers by algebraic numbers of degree at most $n$. Our bound exceeds $n/\sqrt{3}\approx 0.5773n$ and thus provides a reasonable qualitative improvement to previous bounds of order $n/2+O(1)$. We further establish new relations between several classical exponents of approximation.