Entropy of Bernoulli convolutions and uniform exponential growth for linear groups (Q2177498)

This paper shows that the conjectured uniform lower bound on the exponential growth rate of non-polynomially growing subgroups of \(\mathrm{GL}_d\) is equivalent to the Lehmer problem in number theory, which asks whether there is a positive lower bound for the logarithmic Mahler measure of all integral polynomials. The argument involves studying the entropy of the random walk on the semi-group generated by the maps \(x\mapsto\lambda x+1\) and \(x\mapsto\lambda x-1\) for an algebraic number \(\lambda\), and relating it to the Mahler measure of an algebraic number \(\lambda\). In addition, a new connection between the Lehmer problem and dimension properties of the Bernoulli convolution associated to algebraic numbers is found. The analysis also gives new results independent of the Lehmer problem, including a large collection of parameter values for which the corresponding Bernoulli convolution has full dimension.