Diophantine properties of elements of SO(3)

DOI10.1007/S00039-001-8222-8MaRDI QIDQ5956636zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Vadim Kaloshin, Igor Rodnianski

Publication date 20 October 2002

Published in Geometric and Functional Analysis. GAFA (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0010145

zbMATH Keywords

Diophantine type \(\text{SO}(3)\)generatorsHaar measuremetric Diophantine approximationwords

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Metric theory (11J83) Classical groups (algebro-geometric aspects) (14L35) Representations of Lie and linear algebraic groups over real fields: analytic methods (22E45) Geometry of classical groups (51N30)

Abstract: A number alpha in R is diophantine if it is not well approximable by rationals, i.e. for some C, nu>0 and any relatively prime p, q in Z we have |alpha q -p|>C q^{-1-vu}. It is well-known and easy to prove that almost every alpha in R is diophantine. In this paper we address a noncommutative version of the question about diophantine properties. Consider a pair A,B in SO(3) and for each n in Z_+ take all possible words in A, A^{-1}, B, and B^{-1} of length n, i.e. for a multiindex I=(i_1,j_1,..., i_s,j_s) put |I|=sum_{k=1}^s (|i_k|+|j_k|) and W_{A,B}(n)={W_{I}(A,B)= A^{i_1}B^{j_1}... A^{i_s}B^{j_s}}_{|I|=n}. Gamburd-Jakobson-Sarnak raised the problem: prove that for Haar almost every pair A, B in SO(3) the closest distance of the word of length n to the identity, i.e. s_{A,B}(n)=min_{|I|=n} |W_{I}(A,B)-Id|, is bounded from below by an exponential function in n. This is an analog of diophantine property for elements of SO(3). In this paper we make first step toward understanding diophantine properties of SO(3). We prove that s_{A,B}(n) is bounded from below by an exponential function in n^2. We also exhibit obstructions to prove a simple exponential in n estimate.

Review text

A real number \(\alpha\) is said to be of Diophantine type \((K, \sigma)\) if \[ \Biggl|\alpha-{p\over q}\Biggr|\geq {K\over q^{2+\sigma}} \] for all rationals \(p/q\). It is well known in the theory of Diophantine approximation that given \(\varepsilon> 0\), almost all real numbers \(\alpha\) are of type \((K, 2 +\varepsilon)\) for some \(K= K(\alpha)\), or more simply are Diophantine. The notion is important in dynamical systems; in KAM theory it is used to control small denominators. The theory of Diophantine approximation has been extended to a variety of settings, from Euclidean and hyperbolic space to manifolds, but in this ground breaking paper the authors address the Diophantine property for a non-Abelian group. They show that for almost all pairs \(A\), \(B\) in \(\text{SO}(3)\), nontrivial words generated by \(A\), \(B\) of length \(n\) are at least \(c^{-n^2}\) from the identity (the most interesting case). The question stems from a conjectured analogue of the Diophantine property for SO(3)'s double cover \(\text{SU}(2)\), raised in [\textit{A. Gamburd}, \textit{D. Jakobson} and \textit{P. Sarnak}, J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 1, No. 1, 51--85 (1999; Zbl 0916.22009)]. While the authors' result is a long way from the conjectured bound of \(c^{-n}\), the proof is not at all easy, and the authors draw on a wide range of mathematics, including the crucial fact that an integer polynomial cannot be small on a set of large measure [see \textit{D. Y. Kleinbock} and \textit{G. A. Margulis}, Ann. Math. (2) 148, No. 1, 339--361 (1998; Zbl 0922.11061)] and algebraic geometry techniques. They discuss obstructions to the exponential bound and provide informative details of related work.

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