Siegel Mean Value Theorem

The following theorem is called Siegel’s mean value theorem.

(Siegel, 1945, [1]) Suppose \(f:\mathbb{R}^{d} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a compactly supported continuous function. Then, the following holds. \[\begin{align} \int_{SL_d(\mathbb{R})/SL_d(\mathbb{Z})}^{} \left( \sum_{v \in g \mathbb{Z}^{n} \setminus \{ 0\}}^{}f(v) \right) dg = \int_{\mathbb{R}^{n}}^{} f(x) dx, \end{align}\] where the \(dx\) on the RHS is the usual Lebesgue measure on \(\mathbb{R}^{d}\).

Setting \(f\) as the indicator function of a ball, the left-hand side gives us the average intersection number of a ball and a lattice. This gives the following lower bound on the sphere packing constant. \[\begin{align} c_d \ge 2. \end{align}\]

Other forms, generalizations

Primitive vectors

In the same paper as the mean value theorem, Siegel also showed the following.

(Siegel, 1945, [1]) Suppose \(f:\mathbb{R}^{d} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a compactly supported continuous function. Then, the following holds. \[\begin{align} \int_{SL_d(\mathbb{R})/SL_d(\mathbb{Z})}^{} \left( \sum_{\substack{ v \in g \mathbb{Z}^{n} \setminus \{ 0\} \\ v = (v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n) \\ \gcd(v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n)=1 } }^{}f(v) \right) dg = \frac{1}{\zeta(k)} \int_{\mathbb{R}^{n}}^{} f(x) dx, \end{align}\] where the \(dx\) on the RHS is the usual Lebesgue measure on \(\mathbb{R}^{d}\).

This gives the following bound on the sphere packing constant \[\begin{align} c_d \ge 2 \zeta(d). \end{align}\]

Here \(\zeta\) is the Riemann-zeta function. Note that \(\zeta(d) \rightarrow 1\) as \(d \to \infty\).

Venkatesh’s mean-value theorem

(Venkatesh, 2013, [2]) Let \(d = 2\varphi(n)\) and \(K = \mathbb{Q}(\mu_{n})\). Suppose \(f:K_{\mathbb{R}}^2 \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a compactly supported bounded measurable function. Then, the following holds. \[\begin{align} \int_{SL_2(K_\mathbb{R})/SL_2(\mathcal{O}_K)}^{} \left( \sum_{v \in g \mathcal{O}_K^{\oplus 2} \setminus \{ 0\}}^{}f(v) \right) dg = \int_{\mathbb{R}^{d}}^{} f(x) dx, \end{align}\] where the \(dx\) on the right-hand side is that Lebesgue measure on \(\mathbb{R}^{d}\) that makes \(\mathcal{O}_K^{\oplus 2} \subseteq K_\mathbb{R}^2 \simeq \mathbb{R}^d\) of unit covolume and \(dg\) is the unique \(SL_2(K_\mathbb{R})\)-invariant probability measure on \(SL_2(K_{\mathbb{R}})/SL_2(\mathcal{O}_{d})\).

Setting \(f\) as the indicator function of a ball, the left-hand side gives us the average intersection number of a ball and a lattice. This gives the following lower bound on the sphere packing constant. \[\begin{align} c_{2 \varphi(n)} \ge n. \end{align}\]

Does there exist a primitive vectors version of Venkatesh’s mean value theorem? Can it be used to prove something like \(c_{2 \varphi(n)} \ge n \zeta_{K}(2)\) for \(K = \mathbb{Q}(\mu_{n})\)?

Here \(\zeta_K\) is the Dedekind-zeta function

Division algebra variant

This was shown in [3]

Let \(D\) be a \(\mathbb{Q}\)-division algebra containing an order \(\mathcal{O} \subseteq D\). Let \(G = SL_k(D_{\mathbb{R}})\) and \(\Gamma = SL_k(\mathcal{O})\), for some \(k \ge 2\). Let \(dg\) be the probability measure on \(G/\Gamma\) that is left-invariant under \(G\) action. Then for any \(f \in C_{c} (D_{\mathbb{R}}^{k})\), we obtain that \[\begin{align} \int_{G / \Gamma}\left( \sum_{v \in g \mathcal{O}^{k} \setminus \{ 0\}} f(v) \right) dg = \int_{D_{\mathbb{R}}^{k}}^{} f(x) dx, \end{align}\] where \(dx\) is a Lebesgue measure on \(D_{\mathbb{R}}^{k}\) with respect to which \(\mathcal{O}^{k}\) has a covolume of \(1\).

Higher moments

See higher moments of SMT.

References

1.
C. L. Siegel, A mean value theorem in geometry of numbers. Annals of Mathematics, (1945) 340–347.
2.
A. Venkatesh, A note on sphere packings in high dimension. International Mathematics Research Notices, 2013 (2013) 1628–1642. https://doi.org/10.1093/imrn/rns096.
3.
N. P. Gargava, Lattice packings through division algebras. arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.04844, (2021).

This page was updated on August 24, 2022.
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