From Apollonius to Zaremba: Local-global phenomena in thin orbits

Abstract

We discuss a number of natural problems in arithmetic, arising in completely unrelated settings, which turn out to have a common formulation involving “thin” orbits. These include the local-global problem for integral Apollonian gaskets and Zaremba’s Conjecture on finite continued fractions with absolutely bounded partial quotients. Though these problems could have been posed by the ancient Greeks, recent progress comes from a pleasant synthesis of modern techniques from a variety of fields, including harmonic analysis, algebra, geometry, combinatorics, and dynamics. We describe the problems, partial progress, and some of the tools alluded to above.