1 Introduction
Let
$A=(a_{i,j})_{1\leqslant i,j\leqslant n}$
be a symmetric integral matrix with
$n\geqslant 4$
. In other words,

with
$a_{i,j}=a_{j,i}\in \mathbb{Z}$
for all
$1\leqslant i<j\leqslant n$
. Let
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})$
be the quadratic form defined as

Let
$t$
be an integer. We call
$f$
regular if
$A$
is invertible. For regular indefinite quadratic forms with
$n\geqslant 4$
, the well-known Hasse principle asserts that
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has integer solutions if and only if
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has local solutions.
In this paper, we consider the equation
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
, where
$x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}$
are prime variables. It is expected that
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has solutions with
$x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}$
primes if there are suitable local solutions. The classical theorem of Hua [Reference Hua7] deals with diagonal quadratic forms in five prime variables. In particular, every sufficiently large integer, congruent to 5 modulo 24, can be represented as a sum of five squares of primes. Recently, Liu [Reference Liu9] handled a wide class of quadratic forms
$f$
with 10 or more prime variables. The general quadratic form in prime variables (or in dense sets) was recently investigated by Cook and Magyar [Reference Cook and Magyar3], and by Keil [Reference Keil8]. In particular, Cook and Magyar [Reference Cook and Magyar3] handled all regular quadratic forms in 21 or more prime variables, while the work of Keil [Reference Keil8] can deal with all regular quadratic forms in 17 or more variables. It involves only five prime variables for diagonal quadratic equation due to the effective mean value theorem. This is similar to the problem concerning Diophantine equations for cubic forms. The works of Baker [Reference Baker1], Vaughan [Reference Vaughan10, Reference Vaughan11] and Wooley [Reference Wooley13, Reference Wooley14] can deal with the diagonal cubic equation in seven variables. However, more variables are involved for general cubic forms. One can refer to the works of Heath-Brown [Reference Heath-Brown4, Reference Heath-Brown5] and Hooley [Reference Hooley6] for general cubic forms.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate general regular quadratic forms in nine or more prime variables. We define

where
${\rm\Lambda}(\cdot )$
is the von Mangoldt function. Our main result is the following.
Theorem 1.1. Suppose that
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})$
is a regular integral quadratic form with
$n\geqslant 9$
, and that
$t\in \mathbb{Z}$
. Let
$\mathfrak{S}(f,t)$
and
$\mathfrak{I}_{f,t}(X)$
be defined in (3.11) and (3.13), respectively. Suppose that
$K$
is an arbitrary large real number. Then we have

where the implied constant depends on
$f$
and
$K$
.
Denote by
$\mathbb{P}$
the set of all prime numbers. For a prime
$p\in \mathbb{P}$
, we use
$\mathbb{Z}_{p}$
to denote the ring of
$p$
-adic integers. Then we use
$\mathbb{U}_{p}$
to denote the set of
$p$
-adic units in
$\mathbb{Z}_{p}$
. The general local to global conjecture of Bourgain–Gamburd–Sarnak [Reference Bourgain, Gamburd and Sarnak2] asserts that
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has prime solutions provided that there are local solutions in
$\mathbb{U}_{p}$
for all
$p\in \mathbb{P}$
. Liu [Reference Liu9, Theorem 1.1] verified this conjecture for a wide class of regular indefinite integral quadratic forms with ten or more variables. Theorem 1.1 has the following consequence improving upon Liu [Reference Liu9, Theorem 1.1].
Theorem 1.2. Let
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})$
be a regular indefinite integral quadratic form with
$n\geqslant 9$
, and let
$t\in \mathbb{Z}$
. Then
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has prime solutions if we have the following two conditions:
-
(i) there are real solutions in
$\mathbb{R}^{+}$ , and
-
(ii) there are local solutions in
$\mathbb{U}_{p}$ for all prime
$p$ .
We define
$N_{f,t}^{\ast }(X)$
to be the number of prime solutions to
$f(p_{1},\ldots ,p_{n})=t$
with
$1\leqslant p_{1},\ldots ,p_{n}\leqslant X$
. Suppose that
$f$
is regular with
$n\geqslant 9$
. Actually, in view of Theorem 1.1, one has
$N_{f,t}^{\ast }(X)\gg _{f,t}X^{n-2}\log ^{-n}X$
for sufficiently large
$X$
if the conditions (i) and (ii) in Theorem 1.2 hold.
Theorem 1.2 covers all regular indefinite integral quadratic forms in nine prime variables. The
$O$
-constant in the asymptotic formula (1.3) is independent of
$t$
. Therefore, Theorem 1.1 can be applied to definite quadratic forms. In particular, if
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})$
is a positive definite integral quadratic form with
$n\geqslant 9$
, then there exist
$r,q\in \mathbb{N}$
so that all sufficiently large natural numbers
$N$
, congruent to
$r$
modulo
$q$
, can be represented as
$N=f(p_{1},\ldots ,p_{n})$
, where
$p_{1},\ldots ,p_{n}$
are prime numbers.
The method in this paper can also be applied to refine Keil [Reference Keil8, Theorem 1.1]. In particular, one may obtain a variant of Keil [Reference Keil8, Theorem 1.1] for a wide class of quadratic forms in nine variables.
2 Notations
As usual, we write
$e(z)$
for
$e^{2{\it\pi}iz}$
. Throughout we assume that
$X$
is sufficiently large. Let
$L=\log X$
. We use
$\ll$
and
$\gg$
to denote Vinogradov’s well-known notations, while the implied constants may depend on the form
$f$
. Denote by
${\it\phi}(q)$
Euler’s totient function.
For a set
${\mathcal{S}}$
in a field
$\mathbb{F}$
, we define

We use
$M_{m,n}({\mathcal{S}})$
to denote the set of
$m$
by
$n$
matrixes

and
$GL_{n}({\mathcal{S}})$
to denote the set of invertible matrixes of order
$n$

respectively. We define the off-diagonal rank of
$A$
as

where

In other words,
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)$
is the maximal rank of a submatrix in
$A$
, which does not contain any diagonal entries. For
$\mathbf{x}=(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})^{T}\in \mathbb{N}^{n}$
, we write

For
$\mathbf{x}=(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})^{T}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n}$
, we also use the notation
${\mathcal{A}}(\mathbf{x})$
to indicate that the argument
${\mathcal{A}}(x_{j})$
holds for all
$1\leqslant j\leqslant s$
. The meaning will be clear from the text. For example, we use
$1\leqslant \mathbf{x}\leqslant X$
and
$|\mathbf{x}|\leqslant X$
to denote
$1\leqslant x_{j}\leqslant X$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n$
and
$|x_{j}|\leqslant X$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n$
, respectively.
In order to apply the circle method, we introduce the exponential sum

where
$A$
is defined in (1.1). We define

where

The intervals
${\mathcal{M}}(q,a;Q)$
are pairwise disjoint for
$1\leqslant a\leqslant q\leqslant Q$
and
$(a,q)=1$
provided that
$Q\leqslant X/2$
. For
$Q\leqslant X/2$
, we set

Now we introduce the major arcs defined as

where
$K$
is a sufficiently large constant throughout this paper. Then we define the minor arcs as

3 The contribution from the major arcs
For
$q\in \mathbb{N}$
and
$(a,q)=1$
, we define

where
$A$
is given by (1.1). Throughout, we assume that
$f$
is connected to
$A$
given by (1.1) and (1.2). Let

Concerning
$B_{f,t}(q)$
, we have the following multiplicative property.
Lemma 3.1. The arithmetic function
$B_{f,t}(q)$
is multiplicative.
Proof. The desired conclusion can be proved by changing variables. ◻
Lemma 3.2. Suppose that
$A$
is invertible. For any prime
$p$
, there exists
${\it\gamma}_{p}={\it\gamma}_{p}(f,t)$
such that
$B_{f,t}(p^{k})=0$
for all
$k>{\it\gamma}_{p}$
. Moreover, if
$p\nmid 2\det (A)$
, then we have
${\it\gamma}_{p}=1$
.
Proof. Throughout this proof, we assume that
$(a,p)=1$
. We first deal with the case
$p\geqslant 3$
. We claim that if

for some
$j\leqslant (k-2)/2$
, then

Indeed, by changing variables, we obtain from (3.3) that

It follows from
$j\leqslant (k-2)/2$
that
$j\leqslant k-j-1$
and
$k\leqslant 2(k-j-1)$
. Thus we deduce that

This establishes the desired claim, and therefore we arrive at

where
$s=\lfloor k/2\rfloor$
. There exists
$P\in GL_{n}(\mathbb{Z}_{p})$
with
$\det (P)=1$
such that
$P^{T}AP=D=\text{diag}\{d_{1},\ldots ,d_{n}\}$
with
$d_{1},\ldots ,d_{n}\in \mathbb{Z}_{p}$
. Note that
$A$
is invertible, one has
$d_{1}\cdots d_{n}\not =0$
. In particular, we can choose
$r\in \mathbb{N}$
such that
$p^{r}\nmid d_{j}$
for all
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n$
. The condition
$A\mathbf{h}\equiv \mathbf{0}(\text{mod}~p^{s})$
implies
$DP\mathbf{h}\equiv \mathbf{0}(\text{mod}~p^{s})$
. If
$s\geqslant r$
, then
$P\mathbf{h}\equiv \mathbf{0}(\text{mod}~p)$
. So we obtain
$\mathbf{h}\equiv \mathbf{0}(\text{mod}~p)$
, which is a contradiction to the condition
$(\mathbf{h},p)=1$
. Therefore, we conclude that

Moreover, when
$p\nmid 2\det (A)$
, we can take
$r=1$
in (3.6).
For
$p=2$
, the above argument is still valid with minor modifications. We now claim that if

for some
$j\leqslant (k-4)/4$
, then

This claim can be established by changing variables
$\mathbf{h}=\mathbf{u}2^{k-2j-2}+\mathbf{v}$
with
$\mathbf{u}(\text{mod}~2^{2})$
and
$\mathbf{v}(\text{mod}~2^{k-2j-2})$
. The argument leading to (3.6) implies that there exists
$k_{0}$
such that

The desired conclusion follows from (3.2), (3.6) and (3.9).◻
Lemma 3.3. Let
$B_{f,t}(q)$
be defined as (3.2). If
$A$
is invertible and
$n\geqslant 5$
, then

Proof. In view of Lemma 3.2, it suffices to prove

for
$p\nmid 2\det (A)$
and
$(a,p)=1$
. Note that

where
$A_{j}$
denotes the submatrix of
$A$
by deleting the
$j$
th row and
$j$
th column, and
$A_{ij}$
denotes the submatrix of
$A_{j}$
by deleting the
$i$
th row and
$i$
th column. For complete Gauss sums, we have

where the implied constant depends on the square matrix
$M$
. The estimate (3.10) follows by observing that
$\text{rank}(A_{j})\geqslant 3$
and
$\text{rank}(A_{ij})\geqslant 1$
. We complete the proof.◻
Now we introduce the singular series
$\mathfrak{S}(f,t)$
defined as

where
$B_{f,t}(q)$
is given by (3.2). From Lemmas 3.2 and 3.3, we conclude the following result.
Lemma 3.4. Suppose that
$A$
is invertible and
$n\geqslant 5$
. Then the singular series
$\mathfrak{S}(f,t)$
is absolutely convergent, and

where the local densities
${\it\chi}_{p}(f,t)$
are defined as

Moreover, if
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has local solutions in
$\mathbb{U}_{p}$
for all prime
$p$
, then one has

Proof. It suffices to explain
$\mathfrak{S}(f,t)\gg 1$
provided that
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has local solutions in
$\mathbb{U}_{p}$
for all prime
$p$
. Indeed, in view of Lemma 3.3, one has
$\prod _{p\geqslant p_{0}}{\it\chi}_{p}(f,t)\gg 1$
for some
$p_{0}$
. When
$p<p_{0}$
, by Lemma 3.2, for some
${\it\gamma}={\it\gamma}_{p}$
we have

Since
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has local solutions in
$\mathbb{U}_{p}$
, one has
${\it\chi}_{p}(f,t)>0$
. This concludes that
$\mathop{\prod }_{p}{\it\chi}_{p}(f,t)\gg 1$
.◻
Remark 3.5. We point out that in view of the proof of Lemmas 3.2–3.3, one has

where
$q_{1}$
is square-free and
$(2,q_{1}q_{2})=(q_{1},q_{2})=1$
. In particular, the singular series is absolutely convergent if
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 5$
. Therefore, the condition that
$f$
is regular with
$n\geqslant 9$
in our Theorem 1.1 can be replaced by
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
.
We define

Since
$I({\it\beta})\ll X^{n}(1+X^{2}|{\it\beta}|)^{-2}$
for
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 5$
, we introduce the singular integral

where
$f(\mathbf{x})=\mathbf{x}^{T}A\mathbf{x}$
. Note that
$\mathfrak{I}_{f,t}(X)\gg _{f,t}X^{n-2}$
if
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})$
is indefinite and
$f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})=t$
has positive real solutions.
Lemma 3.6. Let
$t\in \mathbb{Z}$
, and let

where
$A\in M_{n,n}(\mathbb{Z})$
is a symmetric matrix with
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 5$
. Then one has

Proof. We write
$f(\mathbf{x})$
for
$\mathbf{x}^{T}A\mathbf{x}$
. By the definition of
$\mathfrak{M}$
, one has

We introduce the congruence condition to deduce that

Since
$q\leqslant P=L^{K}$
, the Siegel–Walfisz theorem together with summation by parts will imply for
$(\mathbf{h},q)=1$
that

It follows from above

By putting (3.16) into (3.15), we obtain

It follows from
$I({\it\beta})\ll X^{n}(1+X^{2}|{\it\beta}|)^{-2}$
that

and

Combining (3.17)–(3.19) together with Remark 3.5, we conclude

The proof of Lemma 3.6 is complete. ◻
4 Estimates for exponential sums
Lemma 4.1. Let
$\{{\it\xi}_{z}\}$
be a sequence satisfying
$|{\it\xi}_{z}|\leqslant 1$
. Then one has

Proof. We expand the square to deduce that

By changing variables, one can obtain

We complete the proof.◻
Lemma 4.2. For
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}(Q)$
, one has

Proof. For
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}(Q)$
, there exist
$a$
and
$q$
such that
$1\leqslant a\leqslant q\leqslant 2Q$
,
$(a,q)=1$
and
$|{\it\alpha}-a/q|\leqslant 2Q(qX^{2})^{-1}$
. By a variant of Vaughan [Reference Vaughan12, Lemma 2.2] (see also Exercise 2 in Chapter 2 [Reference Vaughan12]), one has

Since
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}(Q)$
, one has either
$q>Q$
or
$|{\it\alpha}-a/q|>Q(qX^{2})^{-1}$
. Then the desired estimate follows immediately.◻
Lemma 4.3. Let
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}$
and
${\it\beta}\in \mathbb{R}$
. For
$d\in \mathbb{Q}$
, we define

If
$d\not =0$
, then one has

where the implied constant depends only on
$d$
and
$K$
.
Proof. The result is essentially classical. In particular, the method used to handle
$\sum _{1\leqslant x\leqslant X}{\rm\Lambda}(x)e({\it\alpha}x^{2})$
can be modified to establish the desired conclusion. We only explain that the implied constant is independent of
${\it\beta}$
. By Vaughan’s identity, we essentially consider two types of exponential sums

and

By Cauchy’s inequality, to handle the summation (4.3), it suffices to deal with

One can apply the differencing argument to the summation of the type
$\sum _{x}e({\it\alpha}^{\prime }x^{2}+x{\it\beta}^{\prime })$
as follows

This leads to the fact that the estimate (4.1) is uniformly for
${\it\beta}$
.◻
Lemma 4.4. Let
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}(Q)$
. Suppose that
$A$
is in the form

where
$\text{rank}(B)\geqslant 3$
and
$\text{rank}(C)\geqslant 2$
. Then we have

Remark 4.5. In view of the proof, the estimate (4.5) still holds provided that
$\text{rank}(B)+\text{rank}(C)\geqslant 5$
.
Proof. By (4.4), we can write
$S({\it\alpha})$
in the form

where
$\mathbf{x}\in \mathbb{N}^{r}$
,
$\mathbf{y}\in \mathbb{N}^{s}$
and
$\mathbf{z}\in \mathbb{N}^{t}$
. Then we have

By Cauchy’s inequality, we obtain

We deduce by expanding the square that

where
${\it\xi}(\mathbf{x}_{1},\mathbf{x}_{2})$
is defined as

We write

Since
$\text{rank}(B)\geqslant 3$
, without loss of generality, we assume that
$\text{rank}(B_{0})=3$
, where
$B_{0}=(b_{i,j})_{1\leqslant i,j\leqslant 3}$
. Let
$B^{\prime }=(b_{i,j})_{4\leqslant i\leqslant r,1\leqslant j\leqslant 3}$
. Then one has

where
$\mathbf{u}^{T}=(h_{1},h_{2},h_{3})$
,
$\mathbf{v}^{T}=(y_{1},y_{2},y_{3})$
and
$\mathbf{k}^{T}=(h_{4},\ldots ,h_{r})B^{\prime }$
. By changing variables
$\mathbf{x}^{T}=2(\mathbf{u}^{T}B_{0}+\mathbf{k}^{T})$
, we obtain

We apply Lemma 4.2 to conclude that

and therefore,

Similar to (4.7), we can prove

Lemma 4.6. Suppose that
$A$
is in the form (4.4) with
$\text{rank}(B)\geqslant 3$
and
$\text{rank}(C)\geqslant 2$
. Then we have

Proof. By Dirichlet’s approximation theorem, for any
${\it\alpha}\in [X^{-1},1+X^{-1}]$
, there exist
$a$
and
$q$
with
$1\leqslant a\leqslant q\leqslant X$
and
$(a,q)=1$
such that
$|{\it\alpha}-a/q|\leqslant (qX)^{-1}$
. Thus the desired conclusion follows from Lemma 4.4 by the dyadic argument.◻
5 Quadratic forms with off-diagonal rank
${\leqslant}3$
Proposition 5.1. Let
$A$
be given by (1.1), and let
$S({\it\alpha})$
be defined in (2.5). Suppose that
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
and
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)\leqslant 3$
. Then we have

where the implied constant depends on
$A$
and
$K$
.
From now on, we assume throughout Section 5 that
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
and

where

Then we introduce
$B_{1},B_{2},B_{3}\in M_{3,n-4}(\mathbb{Z})$
defined as


and

Subject to the assumption (5.1), we have the following.
Lemma 5.2. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=\text{rank}(B_{3})=2$
, then one has

Lemma 5.3. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=2$
and
$\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, then one has

Lemma 5.4. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=2$
and
$\text{rank}(B_{2})=\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, then one has

Lemma 5.5. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, then one has

Remark for the Proof of Proposition 5.1.
If
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)=0$
, then
$A$
is a diagonal matrix and the conclusion is classical. When
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)=3$
, our conclusion follows from Lemmas 5.2–5.5 immediately. The method applied to establish Lemmas 5.2–5.5 can also be used to deal with the case
$1\leqslant \text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)\leqslant 2$
. Indeed, the proof of Proposition 5.1 under the condition
$1\leqslant \text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)\leqslant 2$
is easier, and we omit the details. Therefore, our main task is to establish Lemmas 5.2–5.5.
Lemma 5.6. Let
$C\in M_{n,n}(\mathbb{Q})$
be a symmetric matrix, and let
$H\in M_{n,k}(\mathbb{Q})$
. For
${\it\alpha}\in \mathbb{R}$
and
${\bf\beta}\in \mathbb{R}^{k}$
, we define

where
${\mathcal{X}}\subset \mathbb{Z}^{n}$
is a finite subset of
$\mathbb{Z}^{n}$
. Let

Then we have

where the implied constant may depend on
$C$
and
$H$
.
Proof. We can choose a natural number
$h\in \mathbb{N}$
such that
$hC\in M_{n,n}(\mathbb{Z})$
and
$hH\in M_{n,k}(\mathbb{Z})$
. Then we deduce that

By orthogonality, we have

Therefore, one obtains

and this completes the proof. ◻
Lemma 5.7. Let
$C\in M_{n,n}(\mathbb{Q})$
be a symmetric matrix, and let
$H\in M_{n,k}(\mathbb{Q})$
. We have

where

Proof. By changing variables
$\mathbf{x}-\mathbf{y}=\mathbf{h}$
and
$\mathbf{x}+\mathbf{y}=\mathbf{z}$
, the desired conclusion follows immediately.◻
The following result is well known.
Lemma 5.8. Let
$C\in M_{k,m}(\mathbb{Q})$
. If
$\text{rank}(C)\geqslant 2$
, then one has

where the implied constant depends on the matrix
$C$
.
5.1 Proof of Lemma 5.2
Lemma 5.9. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=\text{rank}(B_{3})=2$
, then we can write
$A$
in the form

where
$B\in GL_{3}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
$C\in M_{3,n-6}(\mathbb{Z})$
and
$D=\text{diag}\{d_{1},\ldots ,d_{n-6}\}$
is a diagonal matrix.
Proof. We write for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n-3$
that

Since
$B=({\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3})\in GL_{3}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
${\it\gamma}_{1}$
,
${\it\gamma}_{2}$
and
${\it\gamma}_{3}$
are linearly independent. For any
$4\leqslant j\leqslant n-3$
, one has
$\text{rank}({\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3},{\it\gamma}_{j})\leqslant \text{rank}(B_{1})=2$
. Therefore, we obtain
${\it\gamma}_{j}\in <{\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3}>$
. Similarly, one has
${\it\gamma}_{j}\in <{\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{3}>$
and
${\it\gamma}_{j}\in <{\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2}>$
. Then we can conclude that
${\it\gamma}_{j}=0$
for
$4\leqslant j\leqslant n-3$
.
For
$7\leqslant i<j\leqslant n$
, we write

Since
$3\leqslant \text{rank}(B_{i,j})\leqslant \text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)=3$
, we conclude that
${\it\eta}_{4}^{T}$
can be linearly represented by
${\it\eta}_{1}^{T}$
,
${\it\eta}_{2}^{T}$
and
${\it\eta}_{3}^{T}$
. Then we obtain
$a_{i,j}=0$
due to
$a_{1,j}=a_{2,j}=a_{3,j}=0$
. Therefore, the matrix
$A$
is in the form (5.6). We complete the proof.◻
Proof of Lemma 5.2.
By Lemma 5.9, we have

By orthogonality, we have

where
${\bf\beta}=({\it\beta}_{1},{\it\beta}_{2},{\it\beta}_{3})^{T}$
and we use
$d{\bf\beta}$
to denote
$d{\it\beta}_{1}\,d{\it\beta}_{2}\,d{\it\beta}_{3}$
. We define

and

where
${\it\xi}_{j}=(a_{4,6+j},a_{5,6+j},a_{6,6+j})^{T}$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n-6$
. On writing
$I_{3}=(\mathbf{e}_{1},\mathbf{e}_{2},\mathbf{e}_{3})$
, we introduce

where
${\it\gamma}_{j}^{T}=(a_{3+j,4},a_{3+j,5},a_{3+j,6})$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant 3$
. With above notations, we have

Therefore, one has the following inequality

We first consider the case
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 3$
. Without loss of generality, we assume
$d_{1}d_{2}d_{3}\not =0$
. By (5.8) and the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, one has

where

and

By Lemmas 5.6 and 5.7, one has

Since
$B$
is invertible, we obtain

Then we conclude from Lemma 5.8 that

It follows from Lemmas 5.6–5.7 that

where
$\mathbf{y}=(y_{1},y_{2},y_{3})^{T}$
,
$\mathbf{y}^{\prime }=(y_{1}^{\prime },y_{2}^{\prime },y_{3}^{\prime })^{T}$
and
$\mathbf{w}^{\prime }=(w_{1}^{\prime },w_{2}^{\prime },w_{3}^{\prime })^{T}$
. Then by Lemma 5.8, we have

Since
$d_{3}\not =0$
, we obtain by Lemma 4.3

and thereby

Now we conclude from (5.9), (5.12)–(5.14) that

Next we consider the case
$1\leqslant \text{rank}(D)\leqslant 2$
. Without loss of generality, we suppose that
$d_{1}\not =0$
and
$d_{k}=0$
for
$3\leqslant k\leqslant n$
. Since
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
, there exists
$k$
with
$3\leqslant k\leqslant n-6$
such that
${\it\xi}_{k}\not =0\in \mathbb{Z}^{3}$
. Then we can find
$i,j$
with
$1\leqslant i<j\leqslant 3$
so that
$\text{rank}(\mathbf{e}_{i},\mathbf{e}_{j},{\it\xi}_{k})=3$
. Without loss of generality, we can assume that
$i=1,j=2$
and
$k=3$
. One has

We deduce from Lemmas 5.6–5.7 that

Then by Lemma 5.8, one has

We deduce from Lemmas 5.6–5.7 again that

On applying
$\text{rank}(\mathbf{e}_{1},\mathbf{e}_{2},{\it\xi}_{3})=3$
and Lemma 5.8, we obtain

It follows from Lemma 4.3 that

Then we conclude from (5.15)–(5.17) that

Now it suffices to assume
$D=0$
. Then the matrix
$A$
is in the form

It follows from
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
that
$\text{rank}(C)\geqslant 3$
. By Lemma 4.6,

This completes the proof of Lemma 5.2.
5.2 Proof of Lemma 5.3
Lemma 5.10. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=2$
and
$\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, then the symmetric integral matrix
$A$
can be written in the form

where
$C=({\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2})\in M_{3,2}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
${\it\gamma}_{3}\in \mathbb{Q}^{3}$
,
${\it\xi}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n-5}$
,
$V\in M_{2,n-5}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
$h\in \mathbb{Q}$
and
$D=\text{diag}\{d_{1},\ldots ,d_{n-5}\}\in M_{n-5,n-5}(\mathbb{Q})$
is a diagonal matrix. Moreover, one has
$({\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3})\in GL_{3}(\mathbb{Q})$
.
Proof. Let us write

Since
$\text{rank}({\it\gamma}_{1}^{\prime },{\it\gamma}_{2}^{\prime },{\it\gamma}_{3}^{\prime })=\text{rank}(B)=3$
, we conclude that
${\it\gamma}_{1}^{\prime }$
,
${\it\gamma}_{2}^{\prime }$
and
${\it\gamma}_{3}^{\prime }$
are linearly independent. For any
$4\leqslant j\leqslant n-3$
, we deduce from
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=2$
that
${\it\gamma}_{j}^{\prime }\in <{\it\gamma}_{2}^{\prime },{\it\gamma}_{3}^{\prime }>\cap <{\it\gamma}_{1}^{\prime },{\it\gamma}_{3}^{\prime }>=<{\it\gamma}_{3}^{\prime }>$
. Therefore, we can write
$A$
in the form

where
$C=({\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2})\in M_{3,2}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
${\it\gamma}_{3}\in \mathbb{Q}^{3}$
,
${\it\xi}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n-5}$
,
$V\in M_{2,n-5}(\mathbb{Z})$
and
$A_{3}\in M_{n-5,n-5}(\mathbb{Q})$
.
For
$6\leqslant j\leqslant n$
. we define
${\it\eta}_{j}^{T}=(a_{j,4},\ldots ,a_{j,j-1},a_{j,j+1},\ldots ,a_{j,n})^{T}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n-4}$
. Then we set
${\it\theta}_{i,j}^{T}=(a_{i,4},\ldots ,a_{i,j-1},a_{i,j+1},\ldots ,a_{i,n})^{T}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n-4}$
for
$1\leqslant i\leqslant 3$
. Since
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)=\text{rank}(B)=\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
,
${\it\eta}_{j}$
can be linearly represented by
${\it\theta}_{1,j}$
,
${\it\theta}_{2,j}$
and
${\it\theta}_{3,j}$
. Let

Then one can choose
$a_{j,j}^{\prime }\in \mathbb{Q}$
such that
$(a_{j,4},\ldots ,a_{j,j-1},a_{j,j}^{\prime },a_{j,j+1},\ldots ,a_{j,n})$
is linearly represented by
${\it\theta}_{1}$
,
${\it\theta}_{2}$
and
${\it\theta}_{3}$
. We consider
$A_{3}$
and
$A_{3}^{\prime }$
defined as

where
$a_{i,j}^{\prime }=a_{i,j}$
for
$6\leqslant i\not =j\leqslant n$
. Since
$A_{3}^{\prime }$
is symmetric, we conclude from above that
$A_{3}^{\prime }=h{\it\xi}{\it\xi}^{T}$
for some
$h\in \mathbb{Q}$
. The proof is completed by noting that
$D=A_{3}-A_{3}^{\prime }$
is a diagonal matrix.◻
Proof of Lemma 5.3.
One can deduce from Lemma 5.10 that

We introduce new variables
$\mathbf{w}\in \mathbb{Z}^{2}$
and
$s\in \mathbb{Z}$
to replace
$2\mathbf{x}^{T}C+\mathbf{y}^{T}A_{2}+2\mathbf{z}^{T}V^{T}$
and
${\it\xi}^{T}\mathbf{z}$
, respectively. Therefore, we have

where
${\bf\beta}^{\prime }=({\it\beta}_{1},{\it\beta}_{2})^{T}$
,
${\bf\beta}=({\it\beta}_{1},{\it\beta}_{2},{\it\beta}_{3})^{T}$
and
$d{\bf\beta}=d{\it\beta}_{1}\,d{\it\beta}_{2}\,d{\it\beta}_{3}$
. We define

On writing
$I_{2}=(\mathbf{e}_{1},\mathbf{e}_{2})$
, we introduce

where
${\it\rho}_{j}=(a_{3+j,4},a_{3+j,5})^{T}$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant 2$
. Let
${\it\xi}=({\it\epsilon}_{1},\ldots ,{\it\epsilon}_{n-5})^{T}$
. Then we define

where
$V=({\it\upsilon}_{1},\ldots ,{\it\upsilon}_{n-5})$
with
${\it\upsilon}_{j}=(a_{4,5+j},a_{5,5+j})^{T}$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n-5$
. With above notations, we obtain

Let

and

By (5.19) and the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, one has for
$i\not =j$
that

One can deduce by Lemmas 5.6 and 5.7 that

Note that

Recalling
$\text{rank}(C,{\it\gamma}_{3})=3$
, one can replace
$\mathbf{x}$
by
$-(z{\it\upsilon}_{i}^{T},-s)(C,{\it\gamma}_{3})^{-1}$
. Therefore, by Lemma 5.8, one has

The argument leading to (5.16) also implies

Now we are able to handle the case
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 2$
. Since
$\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, one has
${\it\epsilon}_{l}\not =0$
for some
$l$
satisfying
$2\leqslant l\leqslant n-5$
. We may assume
${\it\epsilon}_{2}\not =0$
. We also have
${\it\epsilon}_{1}\not =0$
due to
$\text{rank}(B)=3$
. If
$d_{l}\not =0$
for some
$l\geqslant 3$
, then we can find
$i,j,k$
pairwise distinct so that
${\it\epsilon}_{j}\not =0$
and
$d_{i}d_{k}\not =0$
. If
$d_{1}d_{2}\not =0$
and
${\it\epsilon}_{j}\not =0$
for some
$j\geqslant 3$
, then we can also find
$i,j,k$
pairwise distinct so that
${\it\epsilon}_{j}\not =0$
and
$d_{i}d_{k}\not =0$
. In these cases, we can conclude from (5.20)–(5.22) that

Next we assume
$d_{l}={\it\epsilon}_{l}=0$
for all
$l\geqslant 3$
. Then we can represent
$A$
in the form

where
$H\in M_{3,4}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
$Y\in M_{4,4}(\mathbb{Z})$
and
$W\in M_{4,n-7}(\mathbb{Z})$
. It follows from
$\text{rank}(B)=3$
and
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
that
$\text{rank}(H)\geqslant 3$
and
$\text{rank}(W)\geqslant 2$
. We apply Lemma 4.6 to conclude

We are left to handle the case
$\text{rank}(D)\leqslant 1$
. Since
$\text{rank}(D)+\text{rank}(V)+1+5\geqslant \text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
, we obtain
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 1$
. Therefore,
$\text{rank}(D)=1$
. We have

where

and


Since
$\text{rank}(C)\geqslant 3$
, we can represent two of
$x_{1},x_{2},x_{3}$
(say
$x_{1}$
and
$x_{2}$
) in terms of
$x_{3}$
,
$y$
and
$w$
. Then by Lemma 5.8, one has

We deduce from Lemma 5.10 that
$\text{rank}\left(\begin{array}{@{}c@{}}{\it\xi}^{T}\\ V\end{array}\right)\geqslant \text{rank}(A)-5-\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 3$
. Therefore, there exist distinct
$i,j,k,s$
such that
$\text{rank}\left(\begin{array}{@{}ccc@{}}{\it\upsilon}_{i}^{T} & {\it\upsilon}_{j}^{T} & {\it\upsilon}_{k}^{T}\\ {\it\epsilon}_{i} & {\it\epsilon}_{j} & {\it\epsilon}_{k}\end{array}\right)=3$
and
$d_{s}\not =0$
. By Lemmas 5.6–5.7, we also have

Hence we can replace
$z_{1},z_{2}$
and
$z_{3}$
by linear functions of
$y$
and
$w$
, and it follows that

Hence we can obtain again that

The proof of Lemma 5.3 is finished.
5.3 Proof of Lemma 5.4
The proof of Lemma 5.10 can be modified to establish the following result. The detail of the proof is omitted.
Lemma 5.11. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=2$
and
$\text{rank}(B_{2})=\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, then we can write
$A$
in the form

where
${\it\gamma}_{1}\in \mathbb{Z}^{3}$
,
${\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3}\in \mathbb{Q}^{3}$
,
$C\in M_{2,n-4}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
$a\in \mathbb{Z}$
,
${\it\upsilon}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n-4}$
,
$H\in M_{2,2}(\mathbb{Q})$
and
$D=\text{diag}\{d_{1},\ldots ,d_{n-4}\}\in M_{n-4,n-4}(\mathbb{Q})$
is a diagonal matrix. Moreover, one has
$({\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3})\in GL_{3}(\mathbb{Q})$
.
Lemma 5.12. Let
$A$
be given by (5.26). We write

Let

Under the conditions in Lemma 5.11, one can find pairwise distinct
$i,j,k,u$
with
$1\leqslant i,j,k,u\leqslant n-4$
such that at least one of the following two statements holds: (i)
$\text{rank}(R_{i,j,k})=3$
and
$d_{u}\not =0$
; (ii)
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{i},{\it\xi}_{j})=2$
and
$d_{k}d_{u}\not =0$
.
Proof. It follows from
$9\leqslant \text{rank}(A)\leqslant \text{rank}(D)+\text{rank}({\it\upsilon})+\text{rank}(C)+4$
that
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 2$
. If
$\text{rank}(D)=2$
, say
$d_{1}d_{2}\not =0$
, then
$\text{rank}(R)\geqslant 3$
, where

Then statement (i) holds. Next we assume
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 3$
. Note that
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{2})=2$
due to
$\text{rank}(B)=3$
. If
$d_{r}d_{s}\not =0$
for some
$r>s\geqslant 3$
, then statement (ii) follows by choosing
$i=1,j=2,k=r$
and
$u=s$
. Therefore, we now assume that
$\text{rank}(D)=3$
and
$d_{1}d_{2}\not =0$
. Without loss of generality, we suppose that
$d_{3}\not =0$
and
$d_{s}=0(4\leqslant s\leqslant n-4)$
. We consider
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{s})$
and
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{2},{\it\xi}_{s})$
for
$4\leqslant s\leqslant n-4$
. If
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{s})=2$
for some
$s$
with
$4\leqslant s\leqslant n-4$
, then one can choose
$i=1$
,
$j=s$
$k=2$
and
$u=3$
to establish statement (ii). Similarly, statement (ii) follows if
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{2},{\it\xi}_{s})=2$
for some
$s$
with
$4\leqslant s\leqslant n-4$
. Thus it remains to consider the case
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{s})=\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{2},{\it\xi}_{s})=1$
for
$4\leqslant s\leqslant n-4$
. However, it follows from
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{2})=\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{2},{\it\xi}_{s})=2$
that
${\it\xi}_{s}=0$
, and this is contradictory to the condition
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
. We complete the proof of Lemma 5.12.◻
Proof of Lemma 5.4.
We deduce from Lemma 5.11 that

We introduce new variables
$w\in \mathbb{Z}$
and
$\mathbf{h}\in \mathbb{Z}^{2}$
to replace
$2\mathbf{x}^{T}{\it\gamma}_{1}+ay+2\mathbf{z}^{T}{\it\upsilon}^{T}$
and
$C\mathbf{z}$
, respectively. Therefore, we have

where
${\bf\beta}=({\it\beta}_{1},{\it\beta}_{2},{\it\beta}_{3})^{T}$
,
${\bf\beta}^{\prime }=({\it\beta}_{2},{\it\beta}_{3})^{T}$
and
$d{\bf\beta}=d{\it\beta}_{1}\,d{\it\beta}_{2}\,d{\it\beta}_{3}$
. Now we introduce

and

On recalling notations in (5.27), we define

Then we obtain from above

One can deduce from Lemmas 5.6 and 5.7 that

If
$\text{rank}(R_{i,j,k})=3$
, then we can represent
$z_{i},z_{j}$
and
$z_{k}$
by linear functions of
$y$
and
$w$
. Then by Lemma 5.8,

If
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{i},{\it\xi}_{j})=2$
, then we can represent
$z_{i},z_{j}$
and
$w$
by linear functions of
$y$
and
$z_{k}$
. Then we obtain by Lemma 5.8 again

provided that
$d_{k}\not =0$
. By Lemmas 5.6–5.7, we can obtain

Then we deduce that

On invoking Lemma 5.8, we arrive at

If
$1\leqslant i,j,k\leqslant n-4$
are pairwise distinct, then one has by (5.29) and the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality

Now it follows from above together with Lemmas 4.3 and 5.12 that

We complete the proof of Lemma 5.4.
5.4 Proof of Lemma 5.5
Similar to Lemmas 5.9–5.11, we also have the following result.
Lemma 5.13. If
$\text{rank}(B_{1})=\text{rank}(B_{2})=\text{rank}(B_{3})=3$
, then we can write
$A$
in the form

where
$C\in M_{3,n-3}(\mathbb{Z})$
,
${\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3}\in \mathbb{Q}^{3}$
,
$H\in M_{3,3}(\mathbb{Q})$
and
$D=\text{diag}\{d_{1},\ldots ,d_{n-3}\}\in M_{n-3,n-3}(\mathbb{Q})$
is a diagonal matrix. Furthermore, we have
$({\it\gamma}_{1},{\it\gamma}_{2},{\it\gamma}_{3})\in GL_{3}(\mathbb{Q})$
.
Lemma 5.14. Let
$A$
be given by (5.30) satisfying the conditions in Lemma 5.13. We write

Then we can find pairwise distinct
$u_{j}(1\leqslant j\leqslant 6)$
with
$1\leqslant u_{1},u_{2},u_{3},u_{4},u_{5},u_{6}\leqslant n-3$
so that
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{u_{1}},{\it\xi}_{u_{2}},{\it\xi}_{u_{3}})=3$
and
$d_{u_{4}}d_{u_{5}}d_{u_{6}}\not =0$
.
Proof. It follows from
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
that
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 3$
. If
$\text{rank}(D)=3$
, then we may assume that
$d_{1}d_{2}d_{3}\not =0$
and
$d_{j}=0$
for
$j\geqslant 4$
. Thus
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{4},\ldots ,{\it\xi}_{n-3})=3$
, and the desired conclusion follows. Next we assume
$\text{rank}(D)\geqslant 4$
. Since
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{2},{\it\xi}_{3})=3$
, the desired conclusion follows again if there are distinct
$k_{1},k_{2}$
and
$k_{3}$
such that
$d_{k_{1}}d_{k_{2}}d_{k_{3}}\not =0$
and
$k_{1},k_{2},k_{3}\geqslant 4$
. Thus we now assume that for any distinct
$k_{1},k_{2},k_{3}\geqslant 4$
, one has
$d_{k_{1}}d_{k_{2}}d_{k_{3}}=0$
. This yields
$\text{rank}(D)\leqslant 5$
. We first consider the case
$\text{rank}(D)=4$
. There are at least two distinct
$j_{1},j_{2}\leqslant 3$
such that
$d_{j_{1}}d_{j_{2}}\not =0$
. Suppose that
$d_{s_{i}}=0$
for
$1\leqslant i\leqslant n-7$
. Then the rank of
$\{{\it\xi}_{s_{i}}\}_{1\leqslant i\leqslant n-7}$
is at least 2, say
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{s_{1}},{\it\xi}_{s_{2}})=2$
. Since
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{1},{\it\xi}_{2},{\it\xi}_{3})=3$
, we can find
$j$
with
$1\leqslant j\leqslant 3$
such that
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{j},{\it\xi}_{s_{1}},{\it\xi}_{s_{2}})=3$
. The desired conclusion follows easily by choosing
$u_{1}=j$
,
$u_{2}=s_{1}$
and
$u_{3}=s_{2}$
. Now we consider the case
$\text{rank}(D)=5$
, and we may assume that
$d_{1}d_{2}d_{3}d_{4}d_{5}\not =0$
and
$d_{r}=0$
for
$r\geqslant 6$
. Since
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
, there exist
$r\geqslant 6$
(say
$r=6$
) such that
${\it\xi}_{r}\not =0$
. Then one can choose
$j_{1},j_{2}\leqslant 3$
so that
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{j_{1}},{\it\xi}_{j_{2}},{\it\xi}_{6})=3$
. The desired conclusion follows by choosing
$u_{1}=j_{1}$
,
$u_{2}=j_{2}$
and
$u_{3}=6$
. The proof of Lemma 5.14 is completed.◻
Proof of Lemma 5.5.
We apply Lemma 5.13 to conclude that

By orthogonality, one has

where
${\bf\beta}=({\it\beta}_{1},{\it\beta}_{2},{\it\beta}_{3})^{T}$
and
$d{\bf\beta}=d{\it\beta}_{1}\,d{\it\beta}_{2}\,d{\it\beta}_{3}$
. Now we introduce

and

where
${\it\xi}_{1},\ldots ,{\it\xi}_{n-3}$
is given by (5.31). We conclude from above

One applying Lemmas 5.6–5.8, we can easily establish

provided that
$\text{rank}({\it\xi}_{u_{1}},{\it\xi}_{u_{2}},{\it\xi}_{u_{3}})=3$
and
$d_{u_{4}}d_{u_{5}}\not =0$
. Similarly, we also have

By (5.32) and the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, one has for distinct
$u_{1},u_{2},u_{3},u_{4}$
and
$u_{5}$
that

Combining (5.33)–(5.35), Lemma 4.3 and Lemma 5.14, one has

The proof of Lemma 5.5 is finished.
6 Quadratic forms with off-diagonal rank
${\geqslant}4$
Proposition 6.1. Let
$A$
be defined in (1.1), and let
$S({\it\alpha})$
be defined in (2.5). We write

Suppose that
$\det (G)\not =0$
. Then we have

where the implied constant depends on
$A$
and
$K$
.
Throughout this section, we shall assume that the matrix
$G$
given by (6.1) is invertible.
Lemma 6.2. Let
${\it\tau}\not =0$
be a real number. Then we have

where the implied constant depends on
${\it\tau}$
.
Proof. Without loss of generality, we assume that
$0<|{\it\tau}|\leqslant 1$
. Thus
$|{\it\tau}({\it\alpha}-{\it\beta})|\leqslant 1$
. We introduce

By Dirichlet’s approximation theorem, there exist
$a\in \mathbb{Z}$
and
$q\in \mathbb{N}$
with
$(a,q)=1$
,
$1\leqslant q\leqslant X^{2}Q^{-1/2}$
and
$|{\it\tau}({\it\alpha}-{\it\beta})-a/q|\leqslant Q^{1/2}(qX^{2})^{-1}$
. Since
$|{\it\tau}({\it\alpha}-{\it\beta})|\leqslant 1$
, one has
$-q\leqslant a\leqslant q$
. If
${\it\tau}({\it\alpha}-{\it\beta})\not \in {\mathcal{M}}$
, then
$q>Q^{1/2}$
. By Vaughan [Reference Vaughan12, Lemma 2.2],

Therefore, we obtain

When
${\it\tau}({\it\alpha}-{\it\beta})\in {\mathcal{M}}$
, we apply the trivial bound to the summation over
$x$
to deduce that

The desired conclusion follows from above immediately. ◻
To introduce the next lemma, we define

For
$\mathbf{v}=(v_{1},\ldots ,v_{5})\in \mathbb{Z}^{5}$
and
$G$
given by (6.1), we write

Lemma 6.3. One has

where

Proof. Let

We set

Then
$f$
can be written in the form

where
$\mathbf{z}=(z_{1},\ldots ,z_{5})$
,
$\mathbf{y}=(y_{1},\ldots ,y_{4})$
,
$\mathbf{w}=(w_{1},\ldots ,w_{n-9})$
. Note that
$\mathbf{y}^{T}B\mathbf{w}+\mathbf{z}^{T}C\mathbf{w}+p(\mathbf{w})$
vanishes if
$n=9$
. Therefore, one has

By Cauchy’s inequality,

where

Then we deduce that

By changing variables
$\mathbf{z}_{1}=\mathbf{z}_{2}+\mathbf{v}$
, we have

We exchange the summation over
$\mathbf{z}$
and the summation over
$\mathbf{v}$
to obtain

where

and

The range of
$z_{j}$
in summation (6.7) depends on
$v_{j}$
. We first follow the standard argument (see for example the argument around (15) in [Reference Wooley15]) to remove the dependence on
$v_{j}$
. We write

and

Then we deduce from (6.7)–(6.9) that

On substituting (6.10) into (6.6), we obtain

Then we conclude that

By putting (6.11) into (6.5), one has

Therefore,

The proof is completed. ◻
Lemma 6.4. Let
$J_{{\it\gamma}}({\it\alpha})$
be defined in (6.4). Then one has uniformly for
${\it\gamma}\in [0,1]$
that

Proof. We deduce by changing variables
$\mathbf{h}=2G\mathbf{v}$
that

for some constants
$c,b_{1},\ldots ,b_{5}$
depending only on
$G$
. We point out that
$b_{1},\ldots ,b_{5}$
are rational numbers, and we extend the domain of function
${\rm\Lambda}(x)$
by taking
${\rm\Lambda}(x)=0$
if
$x\in \mathbb{Q}\setminus \mathbb{N}$
. Then we have

We first handle the easier case
$b_{5}=0$
. In this case, we can easily obtain a nontrivial estimate for the summation over
$h$
. By Cauchy’s inequality and Lemma 4.1, one has

For
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}(Q)$
, we apply Lemma 4.2 to deduce from above

Then for
${\it\alpha}\in \mathfrak{m}(Q)$
, we obtain

and thereby

provided that
$b_{5}=0$
. From now on, we assume
$b_{5}\not =0$
. Then we have

for some constant
$c^{\prime }$
depending only on
$b_{1},\ldots ,b_{5}$
and
$c$
. Therefore, one has

We apply Cauchy’s inequality to deduce that

We apply Cauchy’s inequality again to obtain

where
${\rm\Xi}_{{\it\gamma}}({\it\alpha})$
is defined as

By Lemma 4.2,

Therefore, we have

Now it suffices to estimate
$\int _{\mathfrak{m}(Q)}{\rm\Xi}_{{\it\gamma}}({\it\alpha})\,d{\it\alpha}$
. We observe

where

and

We exchange the order of summation and integration to conclude that

Then the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality implies

Now we apply the method developed by the author [Reference Zhao16] to deduce that

where
$\mathbf{u}_{1}=(u_{1},\ldots ,u_{4})^{T}\in \mathbb{Z}^{4}$
and
$\mathbf{u}_{2}=(u_{1}^{\prime },\ldots ,u_{4}^{\prime })^{T}\in \mathbb{Z}^{4}$
. Therefore, we obtain by Lemma 4.2

Then we conclude from Lemma 6.2 that


By substituting (6.16) into (6.13), we obtain

provided that
$b_{5}\not =0$
.
We complete the proof in view of the argument around (6.12) and (6.17).◻
Lemma 6.5. One has

Proof. By Cauchy’s inequality,

It follows from Lemmas 6.3–6.4 that

We finish Section 6 by pointing out that Proposition 6.1 follows from Lemma 6.5 by the dyadic argument.
7 The Proof of Theorem 1.1
By orthogonality, we have

Recalling the definitions of
$\mathfrak{M}$
and
$\mathfrak{m}$
in (2.8) and (2.9), we have

In light of Lemma 3.6, to establish the asymptotic formula (1.3), it suffices to prove

In view of Proposition 6.1 and the work of Liu [Reference Liu9] (see also Remark of Lemma 4.4), the estimate (7.2) holds if there exists an invertible matrix

with

Next we assume
$\text{rank}(B)\leqslant 4$
for all
$B=(a_{i_{k},j_{l}})_{1\leqslant k,l\leqslant 5}$
satisfying
$|\{i_{1},\ldots ,i_{5}\}\cap \{j_{1},\ldots ,j_{5}\}|\leqslant 1$
. This yields
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)\leqslant 4$
. By Proposition 5.1, we can establish (7.2) again if
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)\leqslant 3$
. It remains to consider the case
$\text{rank}_{\text{off}}(A)=4$
. Without loss of generality, we assume that
$\text{rank}(C)=4$
, where

Let
${\it\gamma}_{j}=(a_{j,5},\ldots ,a_{j,n})^{T}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n-4}$
for
$1\leqslant j\leqslant n$
. Then
${\it\gamma}_{1}$
,
${\it\gamma}_{2}$
,
${\it\gamma}_{3}$
and
${\it\gamma}_{4}$
are linear independent due to
$\text{rank}(C)=4$
. For
$5\leqslant k\leqslant n$
, we consider

According to our assumption, one has
$\text{rank}(B)\leqslant 4$
. Then we conclude from above that
${\it\gamma}_{k}$
can be linear represented by
${\it\gamma}_{1}$
,
${\it\gamma}_{2}$
,
${\it\gamma}_{3}$
and
${\it\gamma}_{4}$
. Therefore, one has
$\text{rank}(H)=4$
, where

We obtain
$\text{rank}(A)\leqslant \text{rank}(H)+4\leqslant 8$
. This is contradictory to the condition that
$\text{rank}(A)\geqslant 9$
. Therefore, we complete the proof of Theorem 1.1.