Diophantine properties of nilpotent Lie groups

Abstract

A finitely generated subgroup${\rm\Gamma}$of a real Lie group$G$is said to be Diophantine if there is${\it\beta}>0$such that non-trivial elements in the word ball$B_{{\rm\Gamma}}(n)$centered at$1\in {\rm\Gamma}$never approach the identity of$G$closer than$|B_{{\rm\Gamma}}(n)|^{-{\it\beta}}$. A Lie group$G$is said to be Diophantine if for every$k\geqslant 1$a random$k$-tuple in$G$generates a Diophantine subgroup. Semi-simple Lie groups are conjectured to be Diophantine but very little is proven in this direction. We give a characterization of Diophantine nilpotent Lie groups in terms of the ideal of laws of their Lie algebra. In particular we show that nilpotent Lie groups of class at most$5$, or derived length at most$2$, as well as rational nilpotent Lie groups are Diophantine. We also find that there are non-Diophantine nilpotent and solvable (non-nilpotent) Lie groups.