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Concept
Arithmetic group
Summary
In mathematics, an arithmetic group is a group obtained as the integer points of an algebraic group, for example They arise naturally in the study of arithmetic properties of quadratic forms and other classical topics in number theory. They also give rise to very interesting examples of Riemannian manifolds and hence are objects of interest in differential geometry and topology. Finally, these two topics join in the theory of automorphic forms which is fundamental in modern number theory.
One of the origins of the mathematical theory of arithmetic groups is algebraic number theory. The classical reduction theory of quadratic and Hermitian forms by Charles Hermite, Hermann Minkowski and others can be seen as computing fundamental domains for the action of certain arithmetic groups on the relevant symmetric spaces. The topic was related to Minkowski's geometry of numbers and the early development of the study of arithmetic invariant of number fields such as the discriminant. Arithmetic groups can be thought of as a vast generalisation of the unit groups of number fields to a noncommutative setting.
The same groups also appeared in analytic number theory as the study of classical modular forms and their generalisations developed. Of course the two topics were related, as can be seen for example in Langlands' computation of the volume of certain fundamental domains using analytic methods. This classical theory culminated with the work of Siegel, who showed the finiteness of the volume of a fundamental domain in many cases.
For the modern theory to begin foundational work was needed, and was provided by the work of Armand Borel, André Weil, Jacques Tits and others on algebraic groups. Shortly afterwards the finiteness of covolume was proven in full generality by Borel and Harish-Chandra. Meanwhile, there was progress on the general theory of lattices in Lie groups by Atle Selberg, Grigori Margulis, David Kazhdan, M. S. Raghunathan and others. The state of the art after this period was essentially fixed in Raghunathan's treatise, published in 1972.
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