Non-spectrality of self-affine measures on the three-dimensional Sierpinski gasket (Q2279816)

From the Introduction: ``Let \(M \in M_{n}\left( \mathbb{R} \right)\) be an expanding real matrix (all the eigenvalues of \(M\) have moduli \(> 1\)) and let \(D \subset \mathbb{Z}^{n}\) be a finite digit set with cardinality \(\#(D)\). Let \(\{\phi_{d}(x)\}_{d\in D}\) be an iterated function system (IFS) defined by \(\phi_{d}(x)=M^{-1} (x+d)\), \(x\in \mathbb{R}^{n}, \, d \in D\). It is known [\textit{J. E. Hutchinson}, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 30, 713--747 (1981; Zbl 0598.28011)] that there exists a unique probability measure \(\mu\) such that \[ \mu:=\mu_{M,D}= \frac{1}{\#(D)} \sum_{d \in D} \mu_{M,D}\circ \phi_{d}^{-1}\, ,\tag{1} \] which is supported on the attractor \(T(M, D)\) of \(\{\phi_{d}\}_{d \in D}\).'' Considering the expanding real matrix \(M\) and the digit set \(D\) defined by \[ M= \left[\begin{array}{ccc} \rho_1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \rho_2 & 0 \\0 & 0 & \rho_3 \end{array}\right] \, , \quad D=\left\{\begin{array}{cccc}\left(\begin{array}{c}0 \\0 \\0\end{array}\right), \left(\begin{array}{c}1 \\0 \\0\end{array}\right),&\left(\begin{array}{c}0 \\1 \\0\end{array}\right), &\left(\begin{array}{c}0 \\0 \\1 \end{array}\right)\end{array}\right\} \tag{2} \] with \(\rho_i \in \mathbb{R}\), \(|\rho_i |>1, \ i =1,2,3\), the authors prove the two following main theorems and provide an open question and conjecture. (Th1) Let \(M,\, D\) and \(\mu_{M,D}\) be given by (2) and (1), respectively. If \[ \rho_1,\, \rho_2,\, \rho_3 \in \{ \pm x ^{\frac{1}{r}} : x \in \mathbb{Q}^{+} \text{ and } r \in \mathbb{Z}^{+} \}, \] then \(L^{2}\left( \mu_{M,D} \right)\) contains an infinite orthogonal set of exponential functions if and only if there exist two numbers of \( \rho_1,\, \rho_2,\, \rho_3\) that are in the set \(\{ \pm \left( \frac{p}{q} \right)^{\frac{1}{r}} : p \in 2 \mathbb{Z}^{+}\, ,\, q \in 2 \mathbb{Z}^{+}-1\text{ and } r \in \mathbb{Z}^{+} \}\). (Th2) With the same notions of (Th1), if \( \rho_1,\, \rho_2,\, \rho_3 \in \{ \frac{p}{q} : p, q \in 2 \mathbb{Z}-1 \}\), then there exist at most 4 mutually orthogonal exponential functions in \(L^{2}\left( \mu_{M,D} \right)\), and the number 4 is the best.