arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sam Chow.
Gallagher's theorem describes the multiplicative diophantine approximation rate of a typical vector. We establish a fully-inhomogeneous version of Gallagher's theorem, a diophantine fibre refinement, and a sharp and unexpected threshold for Liouville fibres. Along the way, we prove an inhomogeneous version of the Duffin--Schaeffer conjecture for a class of non-monotonic approximation functions.
Let $\varepsilon>0$. We construct an explicit, full-measure set of $α\in[0,1]$ such that if $γ\in \mathbb{R}$ then, for almost all $β\in[0,1]$, if $δ\in \mathbb{R}$ then there are infinitely many integers $n\geq 1$ for which \[ n \Vert nα- γ\Vert \cdot \Vert nβ- δ\Vert < \frac{(\log \log n)^{3 + \varepsilon}}{\log n}. \] This is a significant quantitative improvement over a result of the first author and Zafeiropoulos. We show, moreover, that the exceptional set of $β$ has Fourier dimension zero, alongside further applications to badly approximable numbers and to lacunary diophantine approximation. Our method relies on a dispersion estimate and the Three Distance Theorem.
How often is a quintic polynomial solvable by radicals? We establish that the number of such polynomials, monic and irreducible with integer coefficients in $[-H,H]$, is $O(H^{3.91})$. More generally, we show that if $n \ge 3$ and $n \notin \{ 7, 8, 10 \}$ then there are $O(H^{n-1.017})$ monic, irreducible polynomials of degree $n$ with integer coefficients in $[-H,H]$ and Galois group not containing $A_n$. Save for the alternating group and degrees $7,8,10$, this establishes a 1936 conjecture of van der Waerden.
We study the Ramsey properties of equations $a_1P(x_1) + \cdots + a_sP(x_s) = b$, where $a_1,\ldots,a_s,b$ are integers, and $P$ is an integer polynomial of degree $d$. Provided there are at least $(1+o(1))d^2$ variables, we show that Rado's criterion and an intersectivity condition completely characterise which equations of this form admit monochromatic solutions with respect to an arbitrary finite colouring of the positive integers. Furthermore, we obtain a Roth-type theorem for these equations, showing that they admit non-constant solutions over any set of integers with positive upper density if and only if $b= a_1 + \cdots + a_s = 0$. In addition, we establish sharp asymptotic lower bounds for the number of monochromatic/dense solutions (supersaturation).
We consider the convergence theory for dyadic approximation in the middle-third Cantor set, $K$, for approximation functions of the form $ψ_τ(n) = n^{-τ}$ ($τ\ge 0$). In particular, we show that for values of $τ$ beyond a certain threshold we have that almost no point in $K$ is dyadically $ψ_τ$-well approximable with respect to the natural probability measure on $K$. This refines a previous result in this direction obtained by the first, third, and fourth named authors (arXiv, 2020).
A famous conjecture of Littlewood (c. 1930) concerns approximating two real numbers by rationals of the same denominator, multiplying the errors. In a lesser-known paper, Wang and Yu (1981) established an asymptotic formula for the number of such approximations, valid almost always. Using the quantitative Koukoulopoulos--Maynard theorem of Aistleitner--Borda--Hauke, together with bounds arising from the theory of Bohr sets, we deduce lower bounds of the expected order of magnitude for inhomogeneous and fibre refinements of the problem.
We use Green's transference principle to show that any subset of the $d$th powers of primes with positive relative density contains nontrivial solutions to a translation-invariant linear equation in $d^2+1$ or more variables, with explicit quantitative bounds.
We establish a strong form of Littlewood's conjecture with inhomogeneous shifts, for a full-dimensional set of pairs of badly approximable numbers on a vertical line. We also prove a uniform assertion of this nature, generalising a strong form of a result by Haynes, Jensen and Kristensen. Finally, we establish a similar result involving inhomogeneously badly approximable numbers, making progress towards a problem posed by Pollington, Velani, Zafeiropoulos and Zorin.
We prove an exact formula for OEIS A000119, which counts partitions into distinct Fibonacci numbers. We also establish an exact formula for its mean value, and determine the asymptotic behaviour.
We show that there are $O_\varepsilon(H^{1.5+\varepsilon})$ monic, cubic polynomials with integer coefficients bounded by $H$ in absolute value whose Galois group is $A_3$. We also show that the order of magnitude for $D_4$ quartics is $H^2 (\log H)^2$, and that the respective counts for $A_4$, $V_4$, $C_4$ are $O(H^{2.91})$, $O(H^2 \log H)$, $O(H^2 \log H)$. Our work establishes that irreducible non-$S_3$ cubic polynomials are less numerous than reducible ones, and similarly in the quartic setting: these are the first two solved cases of a 1936 conjecture made by van der Waerden.
In this paper, we study the metric theory of dyadic approximation in the middle-third Cantor set. This theory complements earlier work of Levesley, Salp, and Velani (2007), who investigated the problem of approximation in the Cantor set by triadic rationals. We find that the behaviour when we consider dyadic approximation in the Cantor set is substantially different to considering triadic approximation in the Cantor set. In some sense, this difference in behaviour is a manifestation of Furstenberg's times 2 times 3 phenomenon from dynamical systems, which asserts that the base 2 and base 3 expansions of a number are not both structured.
We extend the Khintchine transference inequalities, as well as a homogeneous-inhomogeneous transference inequality for lattices, due to Bugeaud and Laurent, to a weighted setting. We also provide applications to inhomogeneous Diophantine approximation on manifolds and to weighted badly approximable vectors. Finally, we interpret and prove a conjecture of Beresnevich-Velani (2010) about inhomogeneous intermediate exponents.
The lonely runner conjecture, now over fifty years old, concerns the following problem. On a unit length circular track, consider $m$ runners starting at the same time and place, each runner having a different constant speed. The conjecture asserts that each runner is lonely at some point in time, meaning distance at least $1/m$ from the others. We formulate a function field analogue, and give a positive answer in some cases in the new setting.
Gallagher's theorem is a sharpening and extension of the Littlewood conjecture that holds for almost all tuples of real numbers. We provide a fibre refinement, solving a problem posed by Beresnevich, Haynes and Velani in 2015. Hitherto, this was only known on the plane, as previous approaches relied heavily on the theory of continued fractions. Using reduced successive minima in lieu of continued fractions, we develop the structural theory of Bohr sets of arbitrary rank, in the context of diophantine approximation. In addition, we generalise the theory and result to the inhomogeneous setting. To deal with this inhomogeneity, we employ diophantine transference inequalities in lieu of the three distance theorem.
We establish partition regularity of the generalised Pythagorean equation in five or more variables. Furthermore, we show how Rado's characterisation of a partition regular equation remains valid over the set of positive $k$th powers, provided the equation has at least $(1+o(1))k\log k$ variables. We thus completely describe which diagonal forms are partition regular and which are not, given sufficiently many variables. In addition, we prove a supersaturated version of Rado's theorem for a linear equation restricted either to squares minus one or to logarithmically-smooth numbers.
Let $f_1, ..., f_R$ be rational forms of degree $d \ge 2$ in $n > σ+ R(R+1)(d-1)2^{d-1}$ variables, where $σ$ is the dimension of the affine variety cut out by the condition $\mathrm{rank}(\nabla f_k)_{k=1}^R < R$. Assume that $\mathbf{f} = \mathbf{0}$ has a nonsingular real solution, and that the forms $(1,...,1) \cdot \nabla f_k$ are linearly independent. Let $\boldsymbolτ \in \mathbb{R}^R$, let $μ$ be an irrational real number, and let $η$ be a positive real number. We consider the values taken by $\mathbf{f}(x_1 + μ, ..., x_n + μ)$ for integers $x_1, ..., x_n$. We show that these values are dense in $\mathbb{R}^R$, and prove an asymptotic formula for the number of integer solutions $\mathbf{x} \in [-P,P]^n$ to the system of inequalities $|f_k(x_1 + μ, ..., x_n + μ) - τ_k| < η$ ($1 \le k\le R$).
Let $A$ be a set of natural numbers. Recent work has suggested a strong link between the additive energy of $A$ (the number of solutions to $a_1 + a_2 = a_3 + a_4$ with $a_i \in A$) and the metric Poissonian property, which is a fine-scale equidistribution property for dilates of $A$ modulo $1$. There appears to be reasonable evidence to speculate a sharp Khintchine-type threshold, that is, to speculate that the metric Poissonian property should be completely determined by whether or not a certain sum of additive energies is convergent or divergent. In this article, we primarily address the convergence theory, in other words the extent to which having a low additive energy forces a set to be metric Poissonian.
The sequence $3, 5, 9, 11, 15, 19, 21, 25, 29, 35,\dots$ consists of odd legs in right triangles with integer side lengths and prime hypotenuse. We show that the upper density of this sequence is zero, with logarithmic decay. The same estimate holds for the sequence of even legs in such triangles. We expect our upper bound, which involves the Erdős--Ford--Tenenbaum constant, to be sharp up to a double-logarithmic factor. We also provide a nontrivial lower bound. Our techniques involve sieve methods, the distribution of Gaussian primes in narrow sectors, and the Hardy--Ramanujan inequality.