The lifting problem for universal quadratic forms over a totally real number field K consists of determining the existence or otherwise of a quadratic form with integer coefficients (or $\mathbb {Z}$-form) that is universal over K. We prove the nonexistence of universal $\mathbb {Z}$-forms over simplest cubic fields for which the integer parameter is big enough. The monogenic case is already known. We prove the nonexistence in the nonmonogenic case by using the existence of a totally positive nonunit algebraic integer in K with minimal (codifferent) trace equal to one.

We study totally positive definite quadratic forms over the ring of integers $\mathcal {O}_K$ of a totally real biquadratic field $K=\mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {m}, \sqrt {s})$. We restrict our attention to classic forms (i.e. those with all non-diagonal coefficients in $2\mathcal {O}_K$) and prove that no such forms in three variables are universal (i.e. represent all totally positive elements of $\mathcal {O}_K$). Moreover, we show the same result for totally real number fields containing at least one non-square totally positive unit and satisfying some other mild conditions. These results provide further evidence towards Kitaoka's conjecture that there are only finitely many number fields over which such forms exist. One of our main tools are additively indecomposable elements of $\mathcal {O}_K$; we prove several new results about their properties.

For any positive integer $M$ we show that there are infinitely many real quadratic fields that do not admit $M$-ary universal quadratic forms (without any restriction on the parity of their cross coefficients).