In this paper we complete Büchi's proof that there is no decision algorithm for the solubility in integers of arbitrary systems of diagonal quadratic form equations, by proving the assertion that whenever $x_1^2, \cdots, x_5^2$ are five squares such that the second differences satisfy \[x_{k+2}^2 - 2 x_{k+1}^2 + x_k^2 = 2\] for $k = 1,2,3$, then they must be consecutive. This answers a question of J.~Richard~Büchi.

The Orbit Problem asks whether the orbit of a point under a matrix reaches a given target set. When the target is a single point, the problem was shown to be decidable in polynomial time by Kannan and Lipton. This decidability result was later extended by Chonev et al. to targets of dimension 3 (in arbitrary ambient dimension), but decidability remains open for subspaces of dimension 4. At the other extreme, the special case of the Orbit Problem in which the target set is a hyperplane of co-dimension 1 is equivalent to the Skolem Problem for linear recurrence sequences, whose decidability has been open for many decades. In this paper, we show that the Orbit Problem is decidable if the target subspace has dimension logarithmic in the dimension of the orbit. Over the rationals, we moreover obtain a complexity bound NP^RP in this case, when the target space dimension is bounded. On the other hand, we show that the version of the Orbit Problem where the dimension of the target subspace is linear in the dimension of the orbit is as hard as the Skolem Problem.

The Skolem Problem asks to determine whether a given linear recurrence sequence (LRS) \(\langle u_n \rangle_{n=0}^\infty\) over the integers has a zero term, that is, whether there exists \(n\) such that \(u_n = 0\). Decidability of the problem is open in general, with the most notable positive result being a decision procedure for LRS of order at most \(4\).

The Skolem Problem asks to determine whether a given linear recurrence sequence (LRS) has a zero term. Showing decidability of this problem is equivalent to giving an effective proof of the Skolem-Mahler-Lech Theorem, which asserts that a non-degenerate LRS has finitely many zeros. The latter result was proven over 90 years ago via an ineffective method showing that such an LRS has only finitely many p-adic zeros. In this paper we consider the problem of determining whether a given LRS has a p-adic zero, as well as the corresponding function problem of computing exact representations of all p-adic zeros. We present algorithms for both problems and report on their implementation. The output of the algorithms is unconditionally correct, and termination is guaranteed subject to the p-adic Schanuel Conjecture (a standard number-theoretic hypothesis concerning the p-adic exponential function). While these algorithms do not solve the Skolem Problem, they can be exploited to find natural-number and rational zeros under additional hypotheses. To illustrate this, we apply our results to show decidability of the Simultaneous Skolem Problem (determine whether two coprime linear recurrences have a common natural-number zero), again subject to the p-adic Schanuel Conjecture.