Article Contents
Article Contents

Estimating the fractal dimension of sets determined by nonergodic parameters

This work was supported by NSF grant DGE-0841164
• Given fixed and irrational $0<α, θ<1$, consider the billiard table $B_{α}$ formed by a $\frac{1}{2}×1$ rectangle with a horizontal barrier of length $α$ emanating from the midpoint of a vertical side and a billiard flow with trajectory angle $θ$. In 1969, Veech introduced two subsets $K_{0}(θ)$ and $K_{1}(θ)$ of $\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z}$ that are defined in terms of the continued fraction representation of $θ∈\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z}$, and Veech showed that these sets have Hausdorff dimension $0$ when $θ$ is rational. Moreover, the set $K_{1}(θ)$ describes the set of all $α$ such that the billiard flow on $B_{α}$ in direction $θ$ is nonergodic. We show that the Hausdorff dimension of the sets $K_{0}(θ)$ and $K_{1}(θ)$ can attain any value in $[0, 1]$ by considering the continued fraction expansion of $θ$. This result resolves an analogue of work completed by Cheung, Hubert, and Pascal in which they consider, for fixed $α$, the set of $θ$ such that the flow on $B_{α}$ in direction $θ$ is nonergodic.

Mathematics Subject Classification: 37C45, 37E99.

 Citation:

• Figure 1.  A billiard table $B_{\alpha}$ with a barrier of length $\alpha$.

Figure 2.  Unfolding of billiard table $B_{\alpha}$.

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