English

Generalized Lattice Point Visibility

Number Theory 2021-03-10 v1

Abstract

It is a well-known result that the proportion of lattice points visible from the origin is given by 1ζ(2)\frac{1}{\zeta(2)}, where ζ(s)=n=11ns\zeta(s)=\sum_{n=1}^\infty\frac{1}{n^s} denotes the Riemann zeta function. Goins, Harris, Kubik and Mbirika, generalized the notion of lattice point visibility by saying that for a fixed bNb\in\mathbb{N}, a lattice point (r,s)N2(r,s)\in\mathbb{N}^2 is bb-visible from the origin if no other lattice point lies on the graph of a function f(x)=mxbf(x)=mx^b, for some mQm\in\mathbb{Q}, between the origin and (r,s)(r,s). In their analysis they establish that for a fixed bNb\in\mathbb{N}, the proportion of bb-visible lattice points is 1ζ(b+1)\frac{1}{\zeta(b+1)}, which generalizes the result in the classical lattice point visibility setting. In this short note we give an nn-dimensional notion of b\bf{b}-visibility that recovers the one presented by Goins et. al. in 22-dimensions, and the classical notion in nn-dimensions. We prove that for a fixed b=(b1,b2,,bn)Nn{\bf{b}}=(b_1,b_2,\ldots,b_n)\in\mathbb{N}^n the proportion of b{\bf{b}}-visible lattice points is given by 1ζ(i=1nbi)\frac{1}{\zeta(\sum_{i=1}^nb_i)}. Moreover, we propose a b\bf{b}-visibility notion for vectors bQ>0n\bf{b}\in \mathbb{Q}_{>0}^n, and we show that by imposing weak conditions on those vectors one obtains that the density of b=(b1a1,b2a2,,bnan)Q>0n{\bf{b}}=(\frac{b_1}{a_1},\frac{b_2}{a_2},\ldots,\frac{b_n}{a_n})\in\mathbb{Q}_{>0}^n-visible points is 1ζ(i=1nbi)\frac{1}{\zeta(\sum_{i=1}^nb_i)}. Finally, we give a notion of visibility for vectors b(Q)n\bf{b}\in (\mathbb{Q}^{*})^n, compatible with the previous notion, that recovers the results of Harris and Omar for bQb\in \mathbb{Q}^{*} in 22-dimensions; and show that the proportion of b\bf{b}-visible points in this case only depends on the negative entries of b\bf{b}.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.07826,
  title  = {Generalized Lattice Point Visibility},
  author = {Carolina Benedetti and Santiago Estupiñán and Pamela E. Harris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.07826},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:17:12.898Z