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Gruber P. Convex and Discrete Geometry

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356 <strong>Geometry</strong> of Numbers<br />

21.1 Basic Concepts <strong>and</strong> Properties <strong>and</strong> a Linear Diophantine Equation<br />

<strong>Discrete</strong> sets of various sorts in E d play an important role in numerous branches<br />

of mathematics <strong>and</strong> other fields, including discrete geometry <strong>and</strong> the geometry of<br />

numbers. It is thus a natural problem to study interesting classes of discrete sets.<br />

In many cases such sets are uniformly distributed over E d , or they have periodicity<br />

properties. We mention Delone sets <strong>and</strong> refer for these to Sect. 32.1, orbits of crystallographic<br />

groups, periodic sets as considered by Zassenhaus, see Sects. 30.4 <strong>and</strong><br />

31.4, <strong>and</strong> lattices.<br />

In the following we define the notion of lattice, basis, fundamental parallelotope<br />

<strong>and</strong> determinant, <strong>and</strong> state the relations between different bases of a lattice.<br />

An application deals with a simple Diophantine equation.<br />

Lattices <strong>and</strong> Lattice Bases<br />

A (geometric) lattice L in E d is the system of all integer linear combinations of d<br />

linearly independent vectors b1,...,bd ∈ E d ,<br />

L = � u1b1 +···+udbd : ui ∈ Z � .<br />

The d-tuple {b1,...,bd} is called a basis of L.<br />

o<br />

b2<br />

F<br />

b1<br />

Fig. 21.1. Lattice<br />

An example of a lattice is the integer lattice<br />

The vectors<br />

Z d = � (u1,...,ud) : ui ∈ Z � .<br />

(1, 0,...,0), (0, 1,...,0), . . . , (0, 0,...,1)<br />

form the st<strong>and</strong>ard basis of Z d .<br />

Lattices appear in many different branches of mathematics, including Diophantine<br />

approximation, algebraic number theory <strong>and</strong> algebraic geometry, complex<br />

analysis (periods of doubly periodic analytic functions), numerical analysis<br />

(nodes for numerical integration), integer programming, coding, <strong>and</strong> crystallography<br />

(Fig. 21.1).

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