Asymptotic Diophantine approximation: the multiplicative case (Q2398292)

The celebrated Littlewood conjecture in Diophantine approximation states that for any pair \((\alpha, \beta) \in \mathbb{R}^2\), \[ \liminf_{q \rightarrow \infty} q \; \Vert q\alpha \Vert \; \Vert q \beta \Vert = 0, \] where \(\Vert \cdot \Vert\) denotes the distance to the nearest integer and the \textit{liminf} is taken over the natural numbers. In the paper under review, the author considers a counting function related to counter-examples and near-counter-examples to this conjecture. Concretely, if \(\phi : [1, \infty) \rightarrow (0, 1/4]\) is a non-increasing function and \[ q \; \Vert q\alpha \Vert \; \Vert q \beta \Vert \ge \phi(q), \] for all \(q \in \mathbb{N}\), parameters \(\varepsilon, T > 0\) are given with \(\varepsilon/T^2 \le 1/e^2\) and \(Q > 1\), then \[ \left\vert \left\vert M_{\alpha, \beta}(\varepsilon, T, Q) \right\vert - 4 \varepsilon Q\left(\log\left(\frac{T^2}{\varepsilon}\right) + 1\right)\right\vert \le 3^{28} (1+2T)^2 \log\left(\frac{T^2}{\varepsilon}\right) \left({\frac{\varepsilon Q} {\phi(Q)}}\right)^{2/3}, \] where \(M_{\alpha, \beta}(\varepsilon, T, Q)\) is the set of all \((p_1, p_2, q) \in \mathbb{Z}^3\) such that \(\vert p_1 + q\alpha\vert \; \vert p_2 + q \beta \vert < \varepsilon\), such that \(\max\{\vert p_1 + q\alpha\vert , \vert p_2 + q \beta \vert\} \le T\), and such that \(0 < q \le Q\). Still assuming that \((\alpha, \beta) \in \mathbb{R}^2\) is a near-counter-example to the Littlewood conjecture in the above sense, this is shown to imply that \[ \sum_{q=1}^{\lfloor Q \rfloor} \left( \Vert q\alpha \Vert \; \Vert q \beta \Vert\right)^{-1} \le 12 Q \left(\log\left( \frac{Q} {\phi(Q)}\right)\right)^2 + 3^{32} \frac{Q} {\phi(Q)} \log\left(\frac{Q}{\phi(Q)}\right). \] This sheds some light on a question of \textit{T. H. Lê} and \textit{J. D. Vaaler} [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 111, No. 3, 561--590 (2015; Zbl 1327.11046)], who proved that a similar bound holds if \((\alpha, \beta) \in \mathbb{R}^2\) is an actual counter-example to the Littlewood conjecture.