A NOTE ON REPRESENTATION NUMBERS OF QUADRATIC FORMS MODULO PRIME POWERS

Let f be an integral quadratic form in k variables, F the Gram matrix corresponding to a ℤ-basis of ℤ^k. For r ∈ F^-1ℤ^k, a rational number n with f(r) ≡ n mod ℤ and a positive integer c, set N_f(n, r; c) := #{x ∈ ℤ^k/cℤ^k : f(x + r) ≡ n mod c}. Siegel showed that for each prime p, there is a number w depending on r and n such that N_f(n, r; p^ν+1) = p^k-1N_f(n, r; p^ν) holds for every integer ν > w and gave a rough estimation on the upper bound for such w. In this short note, we give a more explicit estimation on this bound than Siegel's.