Decreasing height along continued fractions

The fact that the euclidean algorithm eventually terminates is pervasive in mathematics. In the language of continued fractions, it can be stated by saying that the orbits of rational points under the Gauss map$x\mapsto x^{-1}-\lfloor x^{-1}\rfloor$eventually reach zero. Analogues of this fact for Gauss maps defined over quadratic number fields have relevance in the theory of flows on translation surfaces, and have been established via powerful machinery, ultimately relying on the Veech dichotomy. In this paper, for each commensurability class of non-cocompact triangle groups of quadratic invariant trace field, we construct a Gauss map whose defining matrices generate a group in the class; we then provide a direct and self-contained proof of termination. As a byproduct, we provide a new proof of the fact that non-cocompact triangle groups of quadratic invariant trace field have the projective line over that field as the set of cross-ratios of cusps. Our proof is based on an analysis of the action of non-negative matrices with quadratic integer entries on the Weil height of points. As a consequence of the analysis, we show that long symbolic sequences in the alphabet of our maps can be effectively split into blocks of predetermined shape having the property that the height of points which obey the sequence and belong to the base field decreases strictly at each block end. Since the height cannot decrease infinitely, the termination property follows.

Geometric Spectra and Commensurability

The work of Reid, Chinburg–Hamilton–Long–Reid, Prasad–Rapinchuk, and the author with Reid have demonstrated that geodesics or totally geodesic submanifolds can sometimes be used to determine the commensurability class of an arithmetic manifold. The main results of this article show that generalizations of these results to other arithmetic manifolds will require a wide range of data. Specifically, we prove that certain incommensurable arithmetic manifolds arising from the semisimple Lie groups of the form (SL(d, R)) r(SL(d, C))s have the same commensurability classes of totally geodesic submanifolds coming from a fixed field. This construction is algebraic and shows the failure of determining, in general, a central simple algebra from subalgebras over a fixed field. This, in turn, can be viewed in terms of forms of SLd and the failure of determining the form via certain classes of algebraic subgroups.

2-Generator arithmetic Kleinian groups III

This paper forms part of the program to identify all the 2-generator arithmetic Kleinian groups. Here we identify all conjugacy classes of such groups with one generator parabolic and the other generator elliptic. There are exactly $14$ of these and exactly $5$ Bianchi groups in their commensurability class, namely $\mathrm{PSL}(2,{\mathcal O}_d)$ for $d=1,2,3,7$ and $15$. This complements our earlier identification of the $4$ arithmetic Kleinian groups generated by two parabolic elements.

Amalgamation and the invariant trace field of a Kleinian group

Let Γ be a Kleinian group of finite covolume and denote by Γ(2) the subgroup generated by {γ2:γ ∈ Γ}. In [9] the trace field of Γ(2) was shown to be an invariant of the commensurability class of Γ. In [8] this field was termed the invariant trace field of Γ and further properties of this field were studied. Following the notation of [8] we denote the invariant trace field of Γ by k(Γ).