On the bifurcation set of unique expansions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fractal structure of the bifurcation set related to unique expansions in non-integer bases, revealing its Hausdorff dimension properties and the dimensional homogeneity of associated univoque sets.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the fractal and dimensional properties of the bifurcation set and univoque sets, extending understanding of their structure in the context of unique expansions.

Findings

The bifurcation set's local Hausdorff dimension equals that of the univoque set at each point.

Univoque sets are dimensionally homogeneous within the bifurcation set.

A dimensional spectrum for bases with unique expansions of 1 is established.

Abstract

Given a positive integer $M$, for $q\in(1, M+1]$ let ${\mathcal{U}}_q$ be the set of $x\in[0, M/(q-1)]$ having a unique $q$-expansion with the digit set $\{0, 1,\ldots, M\}$, and let $\mathbf{U}_q$ be the set of corresponding $q$-expansions. Recently, Komornik et al.~(Adv. Math., 2017) showed that the topological entropy function $H: q \mapsto h_{top}(\mathbf{U}_q)$ is a Devil's staircase in $(1, M+1]$. Let $\mathcal{B}$ be the bifurcation set of $H$ defined by \[ \mathcal{B}=\{q\in(1, M+1]: H(p)\ne H(q)\quad\textrm{for any}\quad p\ne q\}. \] In this paper we analyze the fractal properties of $\mathcal{B}$, and show that for any $q\in \mathcal{B}$, \[ \lim_{\delta\rightarrow 0} \dim_H(\mathcal{B}\cap(q-\delta, q+\delta))=\dim_H\mathcal{U}_q, \] where $\dim_H$ denotes the Hausdorff dimension. Moreover, when $q\in\mathcal{B}$ the univoque set $\mathcal{U}_q$ is dimensionally homogeneous, i.e., $ \dim_H(\mathcal{U}_q\cap V)=\dim_H\mathcal{U}_q $ for any open set $V$ that intersect $\mathcal{U}_q$. As an application we obtain a dimensional spectrum result for the set $\mathcal{U}$ containing all bases $q\in(1, M+1]$ such that $1$ admits a unique $q$-expansion. In particular, we prove that for any $t>1$ we have \[ \dim_H(\mathcal{U}\cap(1, t])=\max_{ q\le t}\dim_H\mathcal{U}_q. \] We also consider the variations of the sets $\mathcal{U}=\mathcal{U}(M)$ when $M$ changes.