LAUSR

In this paper we prove that the exact analogue of the author’s work with real irrationals and rational primes (G. Harman, On the distribution of $\alpha p$ modulo one II, Proc. London Math. Soc. (3) 72, 1996, 241–260) holds for approximating $\alpha \in \mathbb{C}\setminus \mathbb{Q}[i]$ with Gaussian primes. To be precise, we show that for such $\alpha $ and arbitrary complex $\beta $ there are infinitely many solutions in Gaussian primes $p$ to $$\begin{equation*} ||\alpha p + \beta|| <| p|^{-7/22}, \end{equation*}$$where $||\cdot ||$ denotes distance to a nearest member of $\mathbb{Z}[i]$. We shall, in fact, prove a slightly more general result with the Gaussian primes in sectors, and along the way improve a recent result due to Baier (S. Baier, Diophantine approximation on lines in $\mathbb{C}^2$ with Gaussian prime constraints, Eur. J. Math. 3, 2017, 614–649).