Resonance between Cantor sets

Abstract

AbstractLet Ca be the central Cantor set obtained by removing a central interval of length 1−2a from the unit interval, and then continuing this process inductively on each of the remaining two intervals. We prove that if log b/log a is irrational, then where dim is Hausdorff dimension. More generally, given two self-similar sets K,K′ in ℝ and a scaling parameter s>0, if the dimension of the arithmetic sum K+sK′ is strictly smaller than dim (K)+dim (K′)≤1 (‘geometric resonance’), then there exists r<1 such that all contraction ratios of the similitudes defining K and K′ are powers of r (‘algebraic resonance’). Our method also yields a new result on the projections of planar self-similar sets generated by an iterated function system that includes a scaled irrational rotation.