On probability measures arising from lattice points on circles (Q522620)

The goal of this marvelous paper is to study particular probability measures on the unit circle. Each such measure arises naturally from a circle centered at the origin and with a radius chosen so that it has non-empty intersection with the integer lattice \(\mathbb{Z}^2\). Such measures and their weak limits are said to be \textit{attainable} from lattice points on circles. The aim of the authors is to reveal the structure of the set of all attainable measures. They show that this set contains all extreme points, in the sense of convex geometry, of the set of all probability measures that are invariant under some natural symmetries. Moreover, the set of attainable measures is closed under convolution. However, it is shown that there exist symmetric probability measures that are not attainable. The main idea of the argument is to study the Fourier coefficients of attainable measures. Restricting to the first two informative Fourier coefficients, it turns out that the set \(\mathcal{P}_2\) of possible pairs of such coefficients for measures in the full set of symmetric probability measures has a rather simple description. The authors prove the existence of non attainable symmetric probability measures by showing that the set \(\mathcal{A}_2\) of pairs of Fourier coefficients of attainable measures is a strict subset of \(\mathcal{P}_2\). The beauty of the paper lies in the fact, that the authors prove this strict inclusion by revealing the complete structure of the set \(\mathcal{A}_2\).