Optimal Diophantine Exponents for $\mathrm{SL}(n)$

Abstract

The \emph{Diophantine exponent} of an action of a group on a homogeneous space, as defined by Ghosh, Gorodnik, and Nevo, quantifies the complexity of approximating the points of the homogeneous space by the points on an orbit of the group. We show that the Diophantine exponent of the $\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{Z}[1/p])$-action on the generalized upper half-space $\mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{R})/\mathrm{SO}_n(\mathbb{R})$, lies in $[1,1+O(1/n)]$, substantially improving upon Ghosh--Gorodnik--Nevo's method which gives the above range to be $[1,n-1]$. We also show that the exponent is \emph{optimal}, i.e.\ equals one, under the assumption of \emph{Sarnak's density hypothesis}. The result, in particular, shows that the optimality of Diophantine exponents can be obtained even when the \emph{temperedness} of the underlying representations, the crucial assumption in Ghosh--Gorodnik--Nevo's work, is not satisfied. The proof uses the spectral decomposition of the homogeneous space and bounds on the local $L^2$-norms of the Eisenstein series.