Small Gaps in the Spectrum of the Rectangular Billiard

We study the size of the minimal gap between the first N eigenvalues of the Laplacian on a rectangular billiard having irrational squared aspect ratio α, in comparison to the corresponding quantity for a Poissonian sequence. If α is a quadratic irrationality of certain type, such as the square root of a rational number, we show that the minimal gap is roughly of size 1/N , which is essentially consistent with Poisson statistics. We also give related results for a set of α’s of full measure. However, on a fine scale we show that Poisson statistics is violated for all α. The proofs use a variety of ideas of an arithmetical nature, involving Diophantine approximation, the theory of continued fractions, and results in analytic number theory.