Limits of Mahler measures in multiple variables (Q6567985)

For a Laurent polynomial \(P\) in \(\mathbb C[z_1^{\pm 1},\dots, z_n^{\pm 1}]\), let\N\[\NP_A(z_1,\ldots,z_m)=P(z_1^{a_{1,1}}\cdots z_m^{a_{m,1}},\ldots,z_1^{a_{1,n}}\cdots z_m^{a_{m,n}}),\N\]\Nwhere \(A\) is a matrix \((a_{i,j}) \in {\mathbb Z}^{m \times n}\). Let \(m(P)\) be the logarithmic Mahler measure of \(P\). Set\N\[\N\varrho(A)=\min \{\Vert v\Vert_{\infty} \>:\> v \in {\mathbb Z}\setminus \{0\}, \> A \cdot v=0\}.\N\]\NIn the case when \(m=1\), by Lawton's result, it follows that \(m(P_{A_d}) \to m(P)\) as \(d \to \infty\), where \(A_d\) is a sequence of row matrices satisfying \(\varrho(A_d) \to \infty\) as \(d \to \infty\). In this paper the authors generalize this result to any \(m \in {\mathbb N}\) (Theorem 1.1) and also obtain an explicit upper bound for the error term \(|m(P_{A_d})-m(P)|\) (Theorem 4.1). As an application, they show, for instance, that for \(P=(1-z_1)(1-z_2)-(1-z_3)(1-z_4)\), which is known to have Mahler's measure \(-18\zeta'(-2)\), and for \(P_d=\sum_{0 \leq i+j \leq d} z_1^i z_2^j\), one has\N\[\Nm(P)-m(P_d) \sim \frac{\log \varrho(A_d)}{2 \varrho(A_d)^2}\N\]\Nas \(d \to \infty\), where \(A_d\) is a sequence of certain \(2 \times 4\) integer matrices.