Distributions of distances and volumes of balls in homogeneous lens spaces

Abstract

Lens spaces are a family of manifolds that have been a source of many interesting phenomena in topology and differential geometry. Their concrete construction, as quotients of odd-dimensional spheres by a free linear action of a finite cyclic group, allows a deeper analysis of their structure. In this paper, we consider the problem of moments for the distance function between randomly selected pairs of points on homogeneous three-dimensional lens spaces. We give a derivation of a recursion relation for the moments, a formula for the kth moment, and a formula for the moment generating function, as well as an explicit formula for the volume of balls of all radii in these lens spaces.