Metric bootstraps for limsup sets

In metric Diophantine approximation, one frequently encounters the problem of showing that a limsup set has positive or full measure. Often it is a set of points in $m$-dimensional Euclidean space, or a set of $n$-by-$m$ systems of linear forms, satisfying some approximation condition infinitely often. The main results of this paper are bootstraps: if one can establish positive measure for such a limsup set in $m$-dimensional Euclidean space, then one can establish positive or full measure for an associated limsup set in the setting of $n$-by-$m$ systems of linear forms. Consequently, a class of $m$-dimensional results in Diophantine approximation can be bootstrapped to corresponding $n$-by-$m$-dimensional results. This leads to short proofs of existing, new, and hypothetical theorems for limsup sets that arise in the theory of systems of linear forms. We present several of these.