Gaps in the sequence square root n mod 1

In this talk I will present some of aspects of the proof of a theorem of Elkies and McMullen (Duke Math Journal, 2004) on the asymptotic distribution of the gap sizes for the finite sequence ( √n (mod 1) : 1 ≤ n ≤ N ) as N goes to infinity. The proof relies, among other things, on tools from homogenous dynamics and relates the problem to one in the geometry of numbers.