On representation of an integer as the sum of three squares and ternary quadratic forms with the discriminants \(p^2\), \(16p^2\). (Q643548)

Let \(s(n)\) denote the number of representations of the positive integer \(n\) as the sum of three squares. The authors derive an identity for \(s(p^2n)-ps(n)\), where \(p\) is an odd prime. In order to describe the form of the identity, let \(\mathcal G\) denote a genus of positive definite integral ternary quadratic forms, and let \(r_{\mathcal G}(n) = \sum_{f \in \mathcal G}\frac{R_f(n)}{|\Aut(f)|}\), where \(|\Aut(f)|\) denotes the number of integral automorphs of \(f\), \(R_f(n)\) denotes the number of representations of \(n\) by \(f\), and the sum extends over a set of representatives for the equivalence classes in \(\mathcal G\). The Siegel-Weil formula gives \(r_{\mathcal G}(n)\) as an expression involving the mass of the genus and a product of local representation densities. Here the authors prove that \[ s(p^2n)-ps(n) = 48r_{TG_{1,p}}(n) - 96r_{TG_{2,p}}(n), \] where \(TG_{1,p}\) denotes the genus of ternary forms of discriminant \(p^2\) and \(TG_{2,p}\) is a particular genus of ternary forms of discriminant \(16p^2\). This identity is obtained by defining a mass preserving bijection between the two genera and explicitly computing the factors appearing in the Siegel-Weil formula for each of the genera.