Systems of rank one, explicit Rokhlin towers, and covering numbers (Q2113935)

This paper considers a dynamical system consisting of rotations of the one-dimensional torus (carrying the normalized Lebesgue measure). These take the form \(f_\alpha (x) = x + \alpha\) mod \(1\), where \(\alpha\) is an irrational angle. Such a system is known to have the property of being rank one, and therefore equivalent to having the covering number of the system also being one. Consequently there is a basis \(B\) such that for arbitrarily large integers \(h\), an arbitrarily large proportion of the unit torus can be covered by a Rokhlin tower \((f^k_\alpha B)\) where \(0 \leq k \leq h-1.\) Although it is possible to choose \(B\) with a diameter less than \(\epsilon > 0\) for any fixed \(\epsilon\), it is not always possible to use an interval for \(B\) except when the partial quotients of \(\alpha\) are unbounded. In this paper the author asks what maximum proportion of the torus is covered when \(B\) is the union of \(n_B\) intervals. When \(n_B = 1\), the answer is known thanks to \textit{N. Chekhova} [Theor. Comput. Sci. 230, 97-- 116 (2000; Zbl 0947.68543)]. The author provides the answer when \(n_B = 2\) and offers a formula for the maximum proportion. Furthermore he shows that the maximum proportion for fixed \(\alpha\) converges to \(1\) when \(n_B \rightarrow \infty\). Many of the author's results here are based on his ``three gap theorem''. This relates the gap structure to the continued fraction expansion of \(\alpha\). The gap structure is the Euclidean distance between neighboring elements of the Kronecker sequence on the torus -- the distance between values of \(\{n\alpha\}\) for integers \(n\) where \(\{ x \}\) represents the fractional part of \(x\). The results also rely on the Rokhlin lemma for measure theoretic dynamical systems, according to which it is always possible to find a measurable set \(B\) such that \(B, f_\alpha B, \dots , f_\alpha^{h-1}B\) are disjoint sets and have joint measure greater than \(1 - \epsilon\) for arbitrary \(\epsilon > 0\) and integer \(n\).