The lonely runner conjecture, now over fifty years old, concerns the following problem. On a unit-length circular track, consider $m$ runners starting at the same time and place, each runner having a different constant speed. The conjecture asserts that each runner is lonely at some point in time, meaning at a distance at least $1/m$ from the others. We formulate a function field analogue, and give a positive answer in some cases in the new setting.

It is an open question whether the fractional parts of non-linear polynomials at integers have the same fine-scale statistics as a Poisson point process. Most results towards an affirmative answer have so far been restricted to almost sure convergence in the space of polynomials of a given degree. We will here provide explicit Diophantine conditions on the coefficients of polynomials of degree two, under which the convergence of an averaged pair correlation density can be established. The limit is consistent with the Poisson distribution. Since quadratic polynomials at integers represent the energy levels of a class of integrable quantum systems, our findings provide further evidence for the Berry–Tabor conjecture in the theory of quantum chaos.

It is proved that all correlations of the sequence of Farey fractions exist and explicit formulas are provided for the correlation measures.