Let $X$ be a normal and geometrically integral projective variety over a global field $K$ and let $\bar {D}$ be an adelic ${\mathbb {R}}$-Cartier divisor on $X$. We prove a conjecture of Chen, showing that the essential minimum $\zeta _{\mathrm {ess}}(\bar {D})$ of $\bar {D}$ equals its asymptotic maximal slope under mild positivity assumptions. As an application, we see that $\zeta _{\mathrm {ess}}(\bar {D})$ can be read on the Okounkov body of the underlying divisor $D$ via the Boucksom–Chen concave transform. This gives a new interpretation of Zhang's inequalities on successive minima and a criterion for equality generalizing to arbitrary projective varieties a result of Burgos Gil, Philippon and Sombra concerning toric metrized divisors on toric varieties. When applied to a projective space $X = {\mathbb {P}}_K^{d}$, our main result has several applications to the study of successive minima of hermitian vector spaces. We obtain an absolute transference theorem with a linear upper bound, answering a question raised by Gaudron. We also give new comparisons between successive slopes and absolute minima, extending results of Gaudron and Rémond.

Fix an integer $n\geqslant 2$. To each non-zero point $\mathbf{u}$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$, one attaches several numbers called exponents of Diophantine approximation. However, as Khintchine first observed, these numbers are not independent of each other. This raises the problem of describing the set of all possible values that a given family of exponents can take by varying the point $\mathbf{u}$. To avoid trivialities, one restricts to points $\mathbf{u}$ whose coordinates are linearly independent over $\mathbb{Q}$. The resulting set of values is called the spectrum of these exponents. We show that, in an appropriate setting, any such spectrum is a compact connected set. In the case $n=3$, we prove moreover that it is a semi-algebraic set closed under component-wise minimum. For $n=3$, we also obtain a description of the spectrum of the exponents $(\text{}\underline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}}_{1},\text{}\underline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}}_{2},\text{}\underline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}}_{3},\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}}_{1},\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}}_{2},\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}}_{3})$ recently introduced by Schmidt and Summerer.

Gama and Nguyen [‘Finding short lattice vectors within Mordell’s inequality’, in: Proceedings of the 40th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, New York, 2008, 257–278] have presented slide reduction which is currently the best SVP approximation algorithm in theory. In this paper, we prove the upper and lower bounds for the ratios $\Vert { \mathbf{b} }_{i}^{\ast } \Vert / {\lambda }_{i} (\mathbf{L} )$ and $\Vert {\mathbf{b} }_{i} \Vert / {\lambda }_{i} (\mathbf{L} )$, where ${\mathbf{b} }_{1} , \ldots , {\mathbf{b} }_{n} $ is a slide reduced basis and ${\lambda }_{1} (\mathbf{L} ), \ldots , {\lambda }_{n} (\mathbf{L} )$ denote the successive minima of the lattice $\mathbf{L} $. We define generalised slide reduction and use slide reduction to approximate $i$-SIVP, SMP and CVP. We also present a critical slide reduced basis for blocksize 2.

We associate to certain filtrations of a graded linear series of a big line bundle a concave function on its Okounkov body, whose law with respect to the Lebesgue measure describes the asymptotic distribution of the jumps of the filtration. As a consequence, we obtain a Fujita-type approximation theorem in this general filtered setting. We then specialize these results to the filtrations by minima in the usual context of Arakelov geometry (and for more general adelically normed graded linear series), thereby obtaining in a simple way a natural construction of an arithmetic Okounkov body, the existence of the arithmetic volume as a limit and an arithmetic Fujita approximation theorem for adelically normed graded linear series. We also obtain an easy proof of the existence of the sectional capacity previously obtained by Lau, Rumely and Varley.

In this note we present inequalities relating the successive minima of an $o$-symmetric convex body and the successive inner and outer radii of the body. These inequalities join known inequalities involving only either the successive minima or the successive radii.