On the representation of quadratic forms by quadratic forms

Diophantine equations in many variables (11D72) Representation problems (11D85) Sums of squares and representations by other particular quadratic forms (11E25) Applications of the Hardy-Littlewood method (11P55)

Abstract: Using the circle method, we show that for a fixed positive definite integral quadratic form

A

, the expected asymptotic formula for the number of representations of a positive definite integral quadratic form

B

by

A

holds true, providing that the dimension of

A

is large enough in terms of the dimension of

B

and the maximum ratio of the successive minima of

B

, and providing that

B

is sufficiently large in terms of

A

.

Review text

Let \(A\) and \(B\) be symmetric positive definite integer matrices of dimension \(n\) and \(m\), respectively. The interest of authors in this paper is to find \(n\times m\) integer matrices \(X\) such that \[ X^{T}AX=B \] thereby generalizing the classical problem of representing a positive integer as a sum of squares. The usual approach is to fix \(m,n\) and \(A\) and then try to represent `large enough' \(B\) for dimension \(m\) as large as possible in terms of \(n\). Hsia, Kitaoka and Kneser [\textit{J. S. Hsia} et al., J. Reine Angew. Math. 301, 132--141 (1978; Zbl 0374.10013)] have shown the local-global principle to hold for \(n\geq 2m+3\) and \( \min_{x \in \mathbb Z^{m} - \{0\}} x^{T}Bx \geq c_{1}\) for some constant \(c_{1}\) depending only on \(A\) and \(n\). \textit{J. S. Ellenberg} and \textit{A. Venkatesh} [Invent. Math. 171, No. 2, 257--279 (2008; Zbl 1247.11048)] used ergodic theory to show that the condition on \(n\) can be greatly improved to \(n \geq m+5\) under the additional assumption that the discriminant of \(B\) is square-free. \textit{R. Schulze-Pillot} [Acta Arith. 138, No. 3, 289--299 (2009; Zbl 1261.11038)] had refined the latter condition. The methods just described do not yield any quantitative information about integer solutions to \(X^{T}AX=B\). Let \(N(A,B)\) denote the number of integer matrices \(X\) satisfying \(X^{T}AX=B\). \textit{C. L. Siegel} [Ann. Math. (2) 36, 527--606 (1935; Zbl 0012.19703)] gave an exact formula for a weighted version of \(N(A,B)\). The focus of this paper is on deriving not an exact but rather an asymptotic formula for \(N(A,B)\), yet one that is valid for all forms \(A\). The previous approaches to this problem have used modular forms, whereas the strategy in this paper is to consider equation \(X^{T}AX=B\) as a system of \(R=\frac{m(m+1)}{2}\) quadratic equations and then apply circle method.

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(13)

This page was built for publication: On the representation of quadratic forms by quadratic forms

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2442200)