Extremal subspaces and their submanifolds (Q2504004)

A manifold \(M \subseteq \mathbb R^n\) is said to be extremal if almost all points on the manifold inherit the typical Diophantine approximation properties of the ambient space. Specifically, in order for \(M\) to be extremal we require that for any \(\varepsilon > 0\), almost no points \({\mathbf x} \in M\) with respect to the natural measure on \(M\) satisfy \[ |{\mathbf x} \cdot {\mathbf q} - p| \leq \max_{1 \leq i \leq n} \{ | q_i |\}^{-n - \varepsilon}, \] for infinitely many \({\mathbf q} = (q_1, \dots, q_n) \in \mathbb Z^n\) and \(p \in \mathbb Z\). It was shown by \textit{D. Y. Kleinbock} and \textit{G.~A. Margulis} that manifolds satisfying a certain non-degeneracy condition are extremal [Ann. Math. (2) 148, No. 1, 339--360 (1998; Zbl 0922.11061)]. The non-degeneracy condition of Kleinbock and Margulis implies that the manifold in question is not contained in any proper affine subspace. The present paper treats the situation when this is the case. It is shown that if an affine subspace \({\mathcal L} \subset \mathbb R^n\) is itself extremal, then any non-degenerate submanifold \(M \subset {\mathcal L}\) is extremal. Additionally, if \({\mathcal L}\) is not extremal, then no subset of \({\mathcal L}\) is extremal. Various criteria for the extremality of affine subspaces are also proved, and the corresponding (stronger) problem of multiplicative approximation is treated. The methods applied in the proof are based on the correspondence used by Kleinbock and Margulis [loc.cit.] between the Diophantine approximation properties of real vectors and a flow in a homogeneous space of lattices.