Counting $2\times 2$ matrices with fixed determinant and bounded coefficients
Number Theory
2026-04-01 v1
Abstract
Recent work by M. Afifurrahman established the first asymptotic estimates with error terms for the number of matrices with fixed non-zero determinant , and with coefficients bounded in absolute value by . In this paper we present a new proof of this result, which also gives an improved error term as . Similar to Afifurrahman's result, our error term is uniform in both and , and our estimates are significant for as small as . To complement this, we also demonstrate that the exponent in this statement cannot be reduced, by establishing a result which gives a different asymptotic main term when is either a prime or the square of a prime, and when .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.16890,
title = {Counting $2\times 2$ matrices with fixed determinant and bounded coefficients},
author = {Kavita Dhanda and Alan Haynes and Silmi Prasala},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.16890},
year = {2026}
}
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7 pages