In this article we study interpolation estimates on a special class of
compactifications of commutative algebraic groups constructed by Serre. We
obtain a large quantitative improvement over previous results due to Masser and
the first author and our main result has the same level of accuracy as the best
known multiplicity estimates. The improvements come both from using special
properties of the compactifications which we consider and from a different
approach based upon Seshadri constants and vanishing theorems.
In this paper we deduce a lower bound for the rank of a family of $p$ vectors
in $\R^k$ (considered as a vector space over the rationals) from the existence
of a sequence of linear forms on $\R^p$, with integer coefficients, which are
small at $k$ points. This is a generalization to vectors of Nesterenko's linear
independence criterion (which corresponds to $k=1$). It enables one to make use
of some known constructions of linear forms small at several points, related to
Pad\'e approximation.
Let $\xi$ be a real irrational number. We are interested in sequences of
linear forms in 1 and $\xi$, with integer coefficients, which tend to 0. Does
such a sequence exist such that the linear forms are small (with given rate of
decrease) and the coefficients have some given rate of growth? If these rates
are essentially geometric, a necessary condition for such a sequence to exist
is that the linear forms are not too small, a condition which can be expressed
precisely using the irrationality exponent of $\xi$.