Abstract:
This survey is devoted to results related to metric properties of classical continued fractions and Voronoi–Minkowski three-dimensional continued fractions. The main focus is on applications of analytic methods based on estimates of Kloosterman sums. An apparatus is developed for solving problems about three-dimensional lattices. The approach is based on reduction to the preceding dimension, an idea used earlier by Linnik and Skubenko in the study of integer solutions of the determinant equation $\det X=P$, where $X$ is a $3\times 3$ matrix with independent coefficients and $P$ is an increasing parameter. The proposed method is used for studying statistical properties of Voronoi–Minkowski three-dimensional continued fractions in lattices with a fixed determinant. In particular, an asymptotic formula with polynomial lowering in the remainder term is proved for the average number of Minkowski bases. This result can be regarded as a three-dimensional analogue of Porter's theorem on the average length of finite continued fractions.
Bibliography: 127 titles.
Keywords:three-dimensional continued fractions, lattices, Kloosterman sums, Gauss–Kuz'min statistics.