Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2016
We show how the theory of linear forms in two logarithms allows one to get very good effective irrationality measures for nth roots of rational numbers a/b, when a is very close to b. We give a p-adic analogue of this result under the assumption that a is p-adically very close to b, that is, that a large power of p divides a−b. As an application, we solve completely certain families of Thue–Mahler equations. Our results illustrate, admittedly in a very special situation, the strength of the known estimates for linear forms in logarithms.