Poissonian pair correlation for directions in multi-dimensional affine lattices and escape of mass estimates for embedded horospheres

Abstract

We prove the convergence of moments of the number of directions of affine lattice vectors that fall into a small disc, under natural Diophantine conditions on the shift. Furthermore, we show that the pair correlation function is Poissonian for any irrational shift in dimension 3 and higher, including well-approximable vectors. Convergence in distribution was already proved in the work of Strömbergsson and the second author [The distribution of free path lengths in the periodic Lorentz gas and related lattice point problems. Ann. of Math. (2)172 (2010), 1949–2033], and the principal step in the extension to convergence of moments is an escape of mass estimate for averages over embedded $\operatorname {SL}(d,\mathbb {R})$ -horospheres in the space of affine lattices.