A Generalized L\'evy-Khintchine Theorem

The famous L\'evy-Khintchine theorem is a beautiful limiting law for the denominators of the convergents of the continued fraction expansion of a real number. In a recent breakthrough, Cheung and Chevallier (Annales scientifiques de l'ENS, 2024) extended this theorem to higher dimensions. In this paper, we consider multiple generalizations of the definition of the best approximates of a matrix and prove analogues of the L\'evy-Khintchine theorem for all these generalizations. A special case of our theorem answers a question posed by Cheung and Chevallier about L\'evy-Khintchine type theorems for arbitrary norms. Another notable instance of our results resolves a conjecture of Yitwah Cheung. While our findings are new for higher dimensions, even in the one-dimensional case our work is a significant improvement over available results. Notably, we extend the results of Cheung and Chevallier by proving their theorems for any Birkhoff generic point and by permitting the best approximates to satisfy additional geometric and arithmetic conditions. Moreover, our main theorem, from which the above results follow, also extends the recent work of Shapira and Weiss.