Diophantine approximations on definable sets

Consider the vanishing locus of a real analytic function on R n restricted to [ 0 , 1 ] n . We bound the number of rational points of bounded height that approximate this set very well. Our result is formulated and proved in the context of o-minimal structures which give a general framework to work with sets mentioned above. It complements the theorem of Pila–Wilkie that yields a bound of the same quality for the number of rational points of bounded height that lie on a definable set. We focus our attention on polynomially bounded o-minimal structures, allow algebraic points of bounded degree, and provide an estimate that is uniform over some families of definable sets. We apply these results to study fixed length sums of roots of unity that are small in modulus.