English

Pair correlations and equidistribution

Number Theory 2016-12-19 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP Spectral Theory

Abstract

A deterministic sequence of real numbers in the unit interval is called \emph{equidistributed} if its empirical distribution converges to the uniform distribution. Furthermore, the limit distribution of the pair correlation statistics of a sequence is called Poissonian if the number of pairs xk,xl(xn)1nNx_k,x_l \in (x_n)_{1 \leq n \leq N} which are within distance s/Ns/N of each other is asymptotically 2sN\sim 2sN. A randomly generated sequence has both of these properties, almost surely. There seems to be a vague sense that having Poissonian pair correlations is a "finer" property than being equidistributed. In this note we prove that this really is the case, in a precise mathematical sense: a sequence whose asymptotic distribution of pair correlations is Poissonian must necessarily be equidistributed. Furthermore, for sequences which are not equidistributed we prove that the square-integral of the asymptotic density of the sequence gives a lower bound for the asymptotic distribution of the pair correlations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.05495,
  title  = {Pair correlations and equidistribution},
  author = {Christoph Aistleitner and Thomas Lachmann and Florian Pausinger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.05495},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

12 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:26:08.032Z