We give formulas for local densities of diagonal integral ternary quadratic forms at odd primes. Exponential sums and quadratic Gauss sums are used to obtain these formulas. These formulas (along with 2-adic densities and Siegel’s mass formula) can be used to compute the representation numbers of certain ternary quadratic forms.
Abstract
Z.-W. Sun [‘Refining Lagrange’s four-square theorem’, J. Number Theory175 (2017), 169–190] conjectured that
every positive integer n can be written as
$ x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2\ (x,y,z,w\in \mathbb {N}=\{0,1,\ldots \})$
with
$x+3y$
a square and also as
$n=x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2\ (x,y,z,w \in \mathbb {Z})$
with
$x+3y\in \{4^k:k\in \mathbb {N}\}$
. In this paper, we confirm these conjectures via the arithmetic theory of ternary quadratic forms.
Diagonal odd-regular ternary quadratic forms
