Geometry Revealed
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Geometry Revealed A Jacob's Ladder to Modern Higher Geometry Bearbeitet von Marcel Berger, Lester J. Senechal 1. Auflage 2010. Buch. xvi, 831 S. Hardcover ISBN 978 3 540 70996 1 Format (B x L): 15,5 x 23,5 cm Gewicht: 1430 g Weitere Fachgebiete > Mathematik > Geometrie > Elementare Geometrie: Allgemeines Zu Inhaltsverzeichnis schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, eBooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte. Chapter IX Lattices, packings and tilings in the plane Preliminary note. For the arrangement of Chaps. IX and X, we have adopted the following policy concerning the interplay between dimension 2 and dimensions 3 and higher. In the present chapter in spite of its title we will treat higher dimensions for those subjects that will not be treated in detail in the next chapter, either because we have chosen not to discuss them further or because we want to treat matters extremely fast. Finally, we will encounter practically no open problems in the case of the plane, contrary to the spirit of our book; this will be entirely different in Chap. X. IX.1. Lattices, a line in the standard lattice Z2 and the theory of continued fractions, an immensity of applications A lattice in the real affine plane A is a subset ƒ that can be written as the set of all a CmuCnv, where a is a point of A and having vectorized A where u, v are lineally independent vectors and where m, n range over the set Z of all integers. In the affine realm, there is essentially but a single lattice, i.e. Z2 R2, which is to say the set of pairs .m; n/ of integers. If we have in addition a Euclidean structure, then there will be different lattices; this will be the subject of Sect. IX.4, although we will encounter these “other” lattices starting with Sect. IX.3 below. The lattice Z2 and more generally the lattices of the Euclidean plane appear abundantly in mathematics: in number theory, which isn’t surprising; in analysis when there is anything to do with doubly periodic functions in two variables (Fourier series in two variables), but also in the theory of functions of a complex variable (elliptic functions, which we encountered through Poncelet’s theorem in Sect. IV.8); in “pure” geometry when we study compact locally Euclidean geometries (a par- ticular case of the space forms, see Sect. VI.XYZ), which arise naturally in bil- liards in Sect. XI.2.A; in physics, even though crystal structures are situated in three dimensional space, when these are cut by planes or we study their diffraction pat- terns by X-rays or other processes, we obtain planar lattice images (Brillouin zones, see for example 3.7 of Gruber and Wills (1993)). It is for readers to find still other resonances for lattices. Decimal calculation is a marvelous invention; in particular, the operations of addi- tion and multiplication are done “trivially”. But it is not the best adapted for certain problems involving rational numbers, since most of these have an infinite decimal 1 expansion ( 3 D 0;33333:::, etc.). Above all, it is not obvious from the decimal M. Berger, Geometry Revealed, DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-70997-8_9, 563 c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 564 CHAPTER IX. LATTICES, PACKINGS AND TILINGS IN THE PLANE expansion how an irrational number can be approximated by rationals other than the k crude 10n . Now such approximation is fundamental in number theory; the Greeks, 22 333 355 who approximated by 7 , then by 106 and 113 , understood this well. It involves the theory of continued fractions (a term that will be explained right away), that has been well understood since the middle of the twentieth Century. If we are to be re- proached for attaching so much importance to this part of number theory, numerous motivations arising from problems in geometry can be found below. The elementary theory of continued fractions, as simple as it may be, is always a bit subtle and hard to visualize. This is why, even though algebra is always necessary, it is agreeable here to present the beginnings of this theory in a geometrical fashion. Here we follow Chap. 7 of Stark (1970), but see also, for a summary, the Klein polygons of Erdös, Gruber and Hammer, (1989, p. 101). The basic idea for approximating a real by ra- tionals is surely that the approximation can be better when the denominator is larger. The other idea is to consider the reals ˛ of R2 as slopes of half lines emanating from the origin in the quadrant RC RC. We feel confident that the farther we go in the direction of ˛, since there are always points at a distance less than 1 from the given half line D of slope ˛>0, the more we can find rational slopes as close as we want to ˛. The whole interest of continued fractions is to end up doing this p both as systematically and as economically as possible; i.e. we would like that the q p p0 chosen at the stage considered minimizes j˛ q j among all the j˛ q0 j for which the denominator q0 is 6 q. It turns out that we can do both things simultaneously. In all that follows, we assume that ˛ is irrational, i.e. the half line D does not contain any point of Z2 other than the origin. We now proceed by recurrence. It is nice to use vectorial language and to consider the vectors Vn D .pnI qn/, where the pn=qn denote the desired approximations for ˛. The first vector V0 D .1I Œ˛/ is of course that given by the integer part Œ˛ of ˛. As a point it is situated below D, but as close as possible among the vectors of the form .1; q/. The next vector will be V1 D .0; 1/ C a1V0, where a1 is the last integer such that V1 is above D. Then V2 will be V0 C a2V1, which is the last of this form below D, etc. We show (however we do it, it is never obvious) that the sequence fVn D Vn2 C anVn1 D .pn;qn/g thus defined by recurrence is indeed automatically the best approximation possible in the sense of minimizing with bounded denominator. We have thus an alternating sandwiching: p p p p p 0 < 2 < 4 < ˛ < 3 < 1 q0 q2 q4 q3 q1 with lim pn D ˛. By construction n!1 qn ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ p ˇ ˇ pn ˇ ˇ˛ ˇ > ˇ˛ ˇ if q 6 qn; q qn IX.1. LATTICES, LINES IN Z2 AND CONTINUED FRACTIONS 565 Fig. IX.1.1. Fig. IX.1.2. but then the sandwiching is also good in an unexpected way, as we always have ˇ ˇ ˇ p ˇ 1 ˇ n ˇ 6 ˛ 2 : qn qn See Sect. IX.3 for a lightning fast and optimal proof! This provides an explanation of the term “continued fraction”, as the preceding shows (proceed with gcd’s) that we can simply define the pairs .pnI qn/ with the aid of the sequence of integers fang that are defined by recurrence by an integer part condition on the sequences f˛n;ang, where we have already seen that a0 D Œ˛, and further: 1 1 ˛1 D ;a1 D Œ˛1; ˛2 D ;a2 D Œ˛2;::: ˛ a0 ˛1 a1 Then ˛ is perfectly defined by the infinite sequence fa0;a1;a2;:::g and the conver- gent sequence of successive fractions 1 1 a0;a0 C ;a0 C ; etc., a1 1 a1 C a2 566 CHAPTER IX. LATTICES, PACKINGS AND TILINGS IN THE PLANE whence the expression continued fraction, wanting in fact to say “infinite fraction”. We write by notational convention: ˛ Dha0;a1;a2;:::i: For the details of the proofs, see Stark (1970). We now owe our readers some examples. Here are two extremes: the first is Dh3; 7; 15; 1; 292; : : :i for which the associated continued fractions are thus: 1 22 1 333 355 103 993 3; 3 C D ;3C D ; ; ; ::: 7 7 1 106 113 33 102 7 C 15 p Then 3 Dh1; 1; 2; 1; 2; 1; 2; : : :i for the fractions 5 7 19 26 71 97 265 1; 2; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; :::I 3 4 11 15 41 56 153 p the continued fraction that represents 3 is truly periodic (to infinity). These examples call for remarks, for questions. The obvious fact that never ceases to surprise the author is that , which is supposed to be a very bad irrational since it is even transcendental it is never a root of a polynomial with integer co- efficients is very well approximated by the rationals, and very quickly! However, it can’t be so very well approximated, since we know from Mahler in 1953 that p > 1 j q j q42 for each q. In contrast, it is an open problem to know the best (small- k p > 1 q est) power such that j q j qk for each integer . Presently it is known through k D 7; that is, is surely a transcendental number, but not by so much! Also known c p 6 c is the best constant for approximation in the form j q j qk . For references about the number , the bible is Berggren, Borwein and Bortwein (2000), but it is necessary to be immersed in it and it is perhaps better to first read the informal exposition (van der Poorten, 1979).