arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Alex Kontorovich.
We prove that a set of density one satisfies the local-global conjecture for integral Apollonian gaskets. That is, for a fixed integral, primitive Apollonian gasket, almost every (in the sense of density) admissible (passing local obstructions) integer is the curvature of some circle in the gasket.
We discuss a number of naturally arising problems in arithmetic, culled from completely unrelated sources, which turn out to have a common formulation involving "thin" orbits. These include the local-global problem for integral Apollonian gaskets and Zaremba's Conjecture on finite continued fractions with absolutely bounded partial quotients. Though these problems could have been posed by the ancient Greeks, recent progress comes from a pleasant synthesis of modern techniques from a variety of fields, including harmonic analysis, algebra, geometry, combinatorics, and dynamics. We describe the problems, partial progress, and some of the tools alluded to above.
We present an explicit approach to the GL(3) Kuznetsov formula. As an application, for a restricted class of test functions, we obtain the low-lying zero densities for the following three families: cuspidal GL(3) Maass forms phi, the symmetric square family sym^2 phi on GL(6), and the adjoint family Ad phi on GL(8). Hence we can identify their symmetry types; they are: unitary, unitary, and symplectic, respectively.
We give a simple derivation of the Plancherel measure for Lebedev-Whittaker transforms on GL(n).
We obtain an asymptotic formula for the number of circles of curvature at most T in any given bounded Apollonian circle packing. For an integral packing, we obtain the upper bounds for the number of circles with prime curvature as well as of pairs of circles with prime curvatures, which are sharp up constant multiples. The main ingredient of our proof is the effective equidistribution of expanding horospheres on geometrically finite hyperbolic 3-manifolds under the assumption that the critical exponent of its fundamental group exceeds one.
In [FI09], Friedlander and Iwaniec studied the so-called Hyperbolic Prime Number Theorem, which asks for an infinitude of elements gamma in SL(2,Z) such that the norm squared |gamma|^2 = a^2 + b^2 + c^2 + d^2 = p, a prime. Under the Elliott-Halberstam conjecture, they proved the existence of such, as well as a formula for their count, off by a constant from the conjectured asymptotic. In this note, we study the analogous question replacing the integers with the Gaussian integers. We prove unconditionally that for every odd n>=3, there is a gamma in SL(2,Z[i]) such that |gamma|^2 = n. In particular, every prime is represented. The proof is an application of Siegel's mass formula.
Let pi be an automorphic representation on GL(r, A_Q) for r=1, 2, or 3. Let d be a fundamental discriminant and chi_d the corresponding quadratic Dirichlet character. We consider the question of the least d, relative to the data (level, weight or eigenvalue) of pi, such that the central value of the twisted L-series is nonzero, i.e. L(1/2, pi x chi_d) != 0. For example, let N be the level of pi. Using multiple Dirichlet series, we prove the nonvanishing of a central twisted $L$-value with d << N^{1/2} for GL(1), d << N^1 for GL(2), and d << N^2 for GL(3), the last case assuming that a certain character is quadratic (see Theorem 1.13). We work over Q for simplicity but the method generalizes to arbitrary number fields. We conjecture that in all cases there should be such a twist with d << N^epsilon. This would follow from a Lindelof-type bound for a multiple Dirichlet series which does not have an Euler product, but is constructed from a Rankin-Selberg integral applied to automorphic forms which are eigenfunctions of Hecke operators.
Let Gamma < SL(2,Z) be a free, finitely generated Fuchsian group of the second kind with no parabolics, and fix two primitive non-zero vectors v0, w0 in Z^2. We consider the set S of all integers occurring in , for gamma in Gamma. Assume that the limit set of Gamma has Hausdorff dimension delta>0.99995, that is, Gamma is thin but not too thin. Using a variant of the circle method, new bilinear forms estimates and Gamburd's 5/6-th spectral gap in infinite-volume, we show that S contains almost all of its admissible primes, that is, those not excluded by local (congruence) obstructions. Moreover, we show that the exceptional set E(N) of integers |n| =1) but fail to be globally represented, n is not in S, has a power savings, $|E(N)| << N^{1-epsilon0}$ for some epsilon>0.
We prove various orbital counting statements for Fuchsian groups of the second kind. These are of independent interest, and also are used in the companion paper [BourgainKontorovich2009] to produce primes in the Affine Linear Sieve.
For the ternary quadratic form Q(x) = x^2 + y^2 - z^2 and a non-zero Pythagorean triple x_0 in Z^3 lying on the cone Q(x) = 0, we consider an orbit O = x_0 Gamma of a finitely generated subgroup Gamma < SO_Q(Z) with critical exponent exceeding 1/2. We find infinitely many Pythagorean triples in O whose hypotenuse, area, and product of side lengths have few prime factors, where "few" is explicitly quantified. We also compute the asymptotic of the number of such Pythagorean triples of norm at most T, up to bounded constants.
We present an elementary derivation of the Jacquet-Shalika construction for the exterior square L-function on GL(n), as a classical Dirichlet series in the Fourier coefficients $A(m_1,...,m_{n-1})$.