Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2010
A Diophantine m-tuple is a set A of m positive integers such that ab+1 is a perfect square for every pair a,b of distinct elements of A. We derive an asymptotic formula for the number of Diophantine quadruples whose elements are bounded by x. In doing so, we extend two existing tools in ways that might be of independent interest. The Erdős–Turán inequality bounds the discrepancy between the number of elements of a sequence that lie in a particular interval modulo 1 and the expected number; we establish a version of this inequality where the interval is allowed to vary. We also adapt an argument of Hooley on the equidistribution of solutions of polynomial congruences to handle reducible quadratic polynomials.