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A very sparse set of dimension 1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
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In July 1982, I was asked by Prof. Jorgen Hoffmann-Jorgensen to construct an uncountable compact set K in the line which was symmetric about 0 and had the property that, for all n, the set of sums of n-tuples from K has measure 0. There are two equivalent conditions: the set of such sums should never contain an interval, or K* ≠ ℝ, where K* is the subgroup of (ℝ, +) generated by K. I did so, and the set I constructed had entropy dimension 0 (and thus also Hausdorff dimension 0). Hoffmann-Jorgensen showed that every set of entropy dimension 0 would exhibit the same behaviour. However, I did not believe that the essence of the example lay in its dimension, and I here modify my construction so that the set K has dimension 1 (and thus also entropy dimension 1), while K* ≠ ℝ, as before. By contrast, the Cantor ternary set has dimension log3(2), but the set of differences is the interval [ –1, 1], so that it does generate ℝ. It follows that the property under consideration is arithmetical rather than dimensional.
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- Copyright © University College London 1984