Inhomogeneous Diophantine approximation on planar curves (Q532547)

The authors develop the inhomogeneous metric theory of simultaneous Diophantine approximation on planar curves --- ``Until the recent proof of the inhomogeneous Baker--Sprindzhuk conjecture, the theory of the inhomogeneous Diophantine approximation on planar curves (let alone manifolds) had remained essentially non-existent and ad-hoc.'' Their results on the one hand complement the existing inhomogeneous metric theory in the plane (of course, restricting points to curves introduces additional difficulties); on the other hand, extend the homogeneous theory on planar curves recently investigated by \textit{V. Beresnevich, D. Dickinson} and \textit{S. Velani} in [Ann. Math. (2) 166, No. 2, 367--426 (2007; Zbl 1137.11048)] and by \textit{R. C. Vaughan} and \textit{S. Velani} in [Invent. Math. 166, No. 1, 103--124 (2006; Zbl 1185.11047)] --- ``This paper constitutes part of a program to develop a coherent inhomogeneous theory for curves, and indeed manifolds, in line with the homogeneous theory.'' A little more precisely, the main result of the paper (Theorem 1) states the following. Let \(\mathcal C\) be a non-degenerate, sufficiently regular planar curve, \(\pmb \theta = (\theta_1,\theta_2)\in \mathbb R^2,\) and \(\psi:\mathbb N\to \mathbb R^+\) a monotonic function with \(\psi(q)\to 0\) as \(q\to \infty\); moreover, let \(\mathcal S(\psi,\pmb \theta)\) denote the set of points \((x_1,x_2)\in \mathbb R^2\) for which there exist infinitely many positive integers \(q\) such that \[ \max_{1\leq i\leq 2}\|qx_i-\theta_i\|< \psi(q) \] (as usual, \(\|\cdot\|\) denotes the distance to the nearest integer). Then, for any \(s\in (1/2,1)\), the \(s\)-dimensional measure (in the sense of Hausdorff) of \(\mathcal C \cap \mathcal S(\psi, \pmb \theta)\) is zero or infinity according to whether the series \(\sum_{q=1}^\infty q^{1-s}\psi(q)^{s+1}\) converges or diverges. Similarly, the 1-dimensional measure of \(\mathcal C \cap \mathcal S(\psi, \pmb \theta)\) is zero or equals the 1-dimensional measure of \(\mathcal C\) according to whether the series \(\sum_{q=1}^\infty \psi(q)^2\) converges or diverges --- ``The proof of Theorem 1 rests on understanding the distribution of `shifted' rational points `near' planar curves.''