On the distribution of $\alpha p$ modulo one in quadratic number fields

TL;DR

This paper improves bounds on the distribution of $\alpha p$ modulo one in quadratic number fields with class number one, extending sieve methods and analyzing Hecke L-functions to achieve a better exponent than previous results.

Contribution

It extends Harman's sieve method to quadratic number fields and improves the exponent for distribution results from 1/4 to 7/22.

Findings

Improved the exponent from 1/4 to 7/22 for quadratic fields.

Extended sieve methods to arbitrary quadratic number fields.

Used analytic properties of Hecke L-functions for asymptotic evaluations.

Abstract

We investigate the distribution of $\alpha p$ modulo one in quadratic number fields $\mathbb{K}$ with class number one, where $p$ is restricted to prime elements in the ring of integers of $\mathbb{K}$. Here we improve the relevant exponent $1/4$ obtained by the first and third named authors for imaginary quadratic number fields \cite{BT} and by the first and second named authors for real quadratic number fields \cite{BM} to $7/22$. This generalizes a result of Harman \cite{HarZi} who obtained the same exponent $7/22$ for $\mathbb{Q}(i)$ by extending his method which gave this exponent for $\mathbb{Q}$ \cite{harman1996on-the-distribu}. Our proof is based on an extension of his sieve method to arbitrary number fields. Moreover, we need an asymptotic evaluation of certain smooth sums over prime ideals appearing in \cite{BM}, for which we use analytic properties of Hecke L-functions with Gr\"o\ss encharacters.