Restricted mean value theorems and metric theory of restricted Weyl sums

Abstract

We study an apparently new question about the behaviour of Weyl sums on a subset $\mathcal{X}\subseteq [0,1)^d$ with a natural measure $\mu$ on $\mathcal{X}$. For certain measure spaces $(\mathcal{X}, \mu)$ we obtain non-trivial bounds for the mean values of the Weyl sums, and for $\mu$-almost all points of $\mathcal{X}$ the Weyl sums satisfy the square root cancellation law. Moreover we characterise the size of the exceptional sets in terms of Hausdorff dimension. Finally, we derive variants of the Vinogradov mean value theorem averaging over measure spaces $(\mathcal{X}, \mu)$. We obtain general results, which we refine for some special spaces $\mathcal{X}$ such as spheres, moment curves and line segments.