Interior of sums of planar sets and curves

Abstract

AbstractRecently, considerable attention has been given to the study of the arithmetic sum of two planar sets. We focus on understanding the interior (A + Γ)°, when Γ is a piecewise ${\mathcal C}^2$ curve and A ⊂ ℝ2. To begin, we give an example of a very large (full-measure, dense, Gδ) set A such that (A + S1)° = ∅, where S1 denotes the unit circle. This suggests that merely the size of A does not guarantee that (A + S1)° ≠ ∅. If, however, we assume that A is a kind of generalised product of two reasonably large sets, then (A + Γ)° ≠ ∅ whenever Γ has non-vanishing curvature. As a byproduct of our method, we prove that the pinned distance set of C := Cγ × Cγ, γ ⩾ 1/3, pinned at any point of C has non-empty interior, where Cγ (see (1.1)) is the middle 1 − 2γ Cantor set (including the usual middle-third Cantor set, C1/3). Our proof for the middle-third Cantor set requires a separate method. We also prove that C + S1 has non-empty interior.