Smith–Minkowski–Siegel mass formula

In mathematics, the Smith–Minkowski–Siegel mass formula (or Minkowski–Siegel mass formula) is a formula for the sum of the weights of the lattices (quadratic forms) in a genus, weighted by the reciprocals of the orders of their automorphism groups. The mass formula is often given for integral quadratic forms, though it can be generalized to quadratic forms over any algebraic number field.

In 0 and 1 dimensions the mass formula is trivial, in 2 dimensions it is essentially equivalent to Dirichlet's class number formulas for imaginary quadratic fields, and in 3 dimensions some partial results were given by Gotthold Eisenstein. The mass formula in higher dimensions was first given by H. J. S. Smith (1867), though his results were forgotten for many years. It was rediscovered by H. Minkowski (1885), and an error in Minkowski's paper was found and corrected by C. L. Siegel (1935).

Many published versions of the mass formula have errors; in particular the 2-adic densities are difficult to get right, and it is sometimes forgotten that the trivial cases of dimensions 0 and 1 are different from the cases of dimension at least 2. Conway & Sloane (1988) give an expository account and precise statement of the mass formula for integral quadratic forms, which is reliable because they check it on a large number of explicit cases.

For recent proofs of the mass formula see (Kitaoka 1999) and (Eskin, Rudnick & Sarnak 1991).

The Smith–Minkowski–Siegel mass formula is essentially the constant term of the Weil–Siegel formula.

If f is an n-dimensional positive definite integral quadratic form (or lattice) then the mass of its genus is defined to be

where the sum is over all integrally inequivalent forms in the same genus as f, and Aut(Λ) is the automorphism group of Λ. The form of the mass formula given by Conway & Sloane (1988) states that for n ≥ 2 the mass is given by

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