Interior Hulls of Clean Lattice Parallelograms and Continued Fractions

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Khan, Gabriel, Khan, Mizan R., Khan, Riaz R., Zhao, Peng
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Khan, Gabriel
Khan, Mizan R.
Khan, Riaz R.
Zhao, Peng
author_facet Khan, Gabriel
Khan, Mizan R.
Khan, Riaz R.
Zhao, Peng
contents The interior hull of a lattice polygon is the convex closure of the lattice points in the interior of the polygon. In this paper we give a concrete description of the interior hull of a clean lattice parallelogram. A clean parallelogram in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is a lattice parallelogram whose boundary contains no lattice points other than its vertices. Using unimodular maps we can identify a clean parallelogram with a parallelogram, $P_{a,n}$, whose vertices are $(0,0), (1,0), (a,n)$ and $(a+1,n)$, with $0<a <n$ and $\gcd(a,n)=1$. Following Stark's geometric approach to continued fractions we show that the convergents of the continued fraction of $n/a$ (viewed as lattice points) appear in a one-to-two correspondence with the vertices of the interior hull of this parallelogram. Consequently, if the continued fraction of $n/a$ has many partial quotients, then the interior hull of the corresponding parallelogram has many vertices. A pleasing consequence of our work is that we obtain an elementary geometric interpretation of the sum of the partial quotients of the continued fraction of $n/a$. Specifically, it is the difference between the area of the clean parallelogram $P_{a,n}$ and the area of its interior hull.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_04356
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Interior Hulls of Clean Lattice Parallelograms and Continued Fractions
Khan, Gabriel
Khan, Mizan R.
Khan, Riaz R.
Zhao, Peng
Number Theory
52C05, 11A55, 11A05
The interior hull of a lattice polygon is the convex closure of the lattice points in the interior of the polygon. In this paper we give a concrete description of the interior hull of a clean lattice parallelogram. A clean parallelogram in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is a lattice parallelogram whose boundary contains no lattice points other than its vertices. Using unimodular maps we can identify a clean parallelogram with a parallelogram, $P_{a,n}$, whose vertices are $(0,0), (1,0), (a,n)$ and $(a+1,n)$, with $0<a <n$ and $\gcd(a,n)=1$. Following Stark's geometric approach to continued fractions we show that the convergents of the continued fraction of $n/a$ (viewed as lattice points) appear in a one-to-two correspondence with the vertices of the interior hull of this parallelogram. Consequently, if the continued fraction of $n/a$ has many partial quotients, then the interior hull of the corresponding parallelogram has many vertices. A pleasing consequence of our work is that we obtain an elementary geometric interpretation of the sum of the partial quotients of the continued fraction of $n/a$. Specifically, it is the difference between the area of the clean parallelogram $P_{a,n}$ and the area of its interior hull.
title Interior Hulls of Clean Lattice Parallelograms and Continued Fractions
topic Number Theory
52C05, 11A55, 11A05
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.04356