Local densities of diagonal integral ternary quadratic forms at odd primes

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.

SUMS OF FOUR SQUARES WITH A CERTAIN RESTRICTION

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.