Inhomogeneous Diophantine approximation on curves and Hausdorff dimension (Q1043498)

The main result of this very interesting paper is a generalization a theorem of \textit{R. C. Baker} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 83, 37--59 (1978; Zbl 0371.10025)] on metric Diophantine approximation on planar curves to the inhomogeneous case. For a real \(x\), let \(\|x\|\) denote the distance of \(x\) from the nearest integer. Let \(\psi:\mathbb{N}\to(0,+\infty)\) denote a decreasing function and \({\mathbf f}:I\to\mathbb{R}^n\) be a \(C^n\) map defined on an interval \(I\subset\mathbb{R}\) and let \(\lambda: I\to\mathbb{R}\) denote a function. Let \(A_n(\psi,\lambda)\) denote the set \(x\in I\) such that \[ \|{\mathbf a}.{\mathbf f}(x)+\lambda(x)\|<\psi(|{\mathbf a}|) \] holds for infinitely many \({\mathbf a}\in\mathbb{Z}^n\setminus\{0\}\). Here the `dot' denotes the standard inner product and \(|{\mathbf a}|=\max_{1\leq i\leq n}|a_i|\), where \({\mathbf a}=(a_1,\dots,a_n)\). The main result of this paper is as follows. \textbf{Theorem:} Let \(\psi:\mathbb{N}\to(0,+\infty)\) be monotonic and \[ \tau_\psi=\liminf_{q\to\infty}\frac{-\log\psi(q)}{\log q}\geq2. \] Let \(\lambda,f_1,f_2:I\to\mathbb{R}\) be \(C^2\) functions such that \((f_1'f_2''-f_1''f_2')(x)\not=0\) everywhere except on a set of Hausdorff dimension \(<\frac{3}{\tau_{\psi}+1}\). Then \[ \dim A_2(\psi,\lambda)=\frac{3}{\tau_{\psi}+1}. \] Here \(\dim\) denotes Hausdorff dimension. Baker [loc. cit.] proved the above result for \(\lambda=0\). For \(n>2\) a lower bound for \(\dim A_4(\psi,\lambda)\) is also established in the paper. This extends the homogeneous result of \textit{H. Dickinson} and \textit{M. M. Dodson} [Duke Math. J. 101, No. 2, 271--281 (2000; Zbl 0973.11073)]. Establishing the exact value of \(\dim A_n(\psi,\lambda)\) for \(n>2\) (under appropriate conditions on \({\mathbf f}\)) is known to be a profound problem in metric Diophantine approximation even in the homogeneous case \(\lambda=0\) -- see \textit{V. I. Bernik} [Transl., Ser. 2, Am. Math. Soc. 140, 15--44 (1988); translation from Acta Arith. 42, 219--253 (1983; Zbl 0655.10051)], \textit{V. V. Beresnevich, V. I. Bernik} and \textit{M. M. Dodson} [Dokl. Nats. Akad. Nauk Belarusi 46, No. 6, 18--20 (2002; Zbl 1177.11066)] for partial results.