Some Diophantine approximation inequalities and products of hyperbolic spaces (Q873735)

Let \(k\) be a real quadratic field with discriminant \(\Delta\) and ring of integers \({\mathcal O}\). Define an embedding \(\sigma : k \to {\mathbb R}^2\) by \(\sigma(\xi) = (\xi, \bar{\xi})\), and let \(H_k(\xi)\) denote the field height of \textit{W.\ M.\ Schmidt} [Diophantine approximation. Lecture Notes in Mathematics 785, Springer-Verlag (1980; Zbl 0421.10019)]. The author proves that there exists \(C \leq 2\sqrt{\Delta}\), depending only on \(k\), such that for all real \(\alpha, \beta \not \in k\) there exist infinitely many \(p, q \in {\mathcal O}\) for which \(| \alpha - p/q| + | \beta - \bar{p}/\bar{q}| < C/H_k(q)\). This is proved by linking the inequality with the geometry of \({\mathbb H}^2\), where \({\mathbb H}\) denotes the upper half-plane in \({\mathbb C}\). Define the horoball \(HB(C)\) to be the subset of \({\mathbb H}^2\) on which \(y_1y_2 > 1/C^2\). The author shows that when \((\alpha, \beta) \not \in \sigma(k)\) the above result is equivalent to the geodesic \(\tau(t)=(\alpha + ie^{-t/\sqrt{2}}, \beta+ie^{-t/\sqrt{2}})\) intersecting infinitely many translates of \(HB(C)\) by elements of \(\text{SL}(2,{\mathcal O}) \cdot g_1 \cup \cdots \cup SL(2,{\mathcal O}) \cdot g_h\), where \(g_1, \dots, g_h\) represent the ideal classes of \({\mathcal O}\). Analogous results are given for quartic extensions having exactly two complex places, with the bound on \(C\) replaced by \(\Delta^{1/4}\) and \(H_k(q)\) replaced by \(\sqrt{H_k(q)}\), via the geometry of the upper half-space \({\mathbb C} \times {\mathbb R}^{+}\). In both the quadratic and quartic case, the author notes that the exponents on \(H_k(q)\) are best possible.