Bifurcation sets arising from non-integer base expansions (Q2286619)

Summary: Given a positive integer \(M\) and \(q\in(1,M+1]\), let \(\mathcal {U}_q\) be the set of \(x\in[0, M/(q-1)]\) having a unique \(q\)-expansion: there exists a unique sequence \((x_i)=x_1x_2\ldots\) with each \(x_i\in\{0,1,\ldots, M\}\) such that \[x=\frac{x_1}{q}+\frac{x_2}{q^2}+\frac{x_3}{q^3}+\cdots.\] Denote by \(\mathbf {U}_q\) the set of corresponding sequences of all points in \(\mathcal {U}_q\). It is well-known that the function \(H\colon q\mapsto h(\mathbf {U}_q)\) is a Devil's staircase, where \(h(\mathbf {U}_q)\) denotes the topological entropy of \(\mathbf{U}_q\). In this paper we give several characterizations of the bifurcation set \[\mathcal {B}:=\{q\in(1,M+1]: H(p)\ne H(q)\text{ for any }p\ne q\}.\] Note that \(\mathcal {B}\) is contained in the set \( \mathcal{U}\) of bases \(q\in(1,M+1]\) such that \(1\in\mathcal {U}_q\). By using a transversality technique we also calculate the Hausdorff dimension of the difference \(\mathcal {U}\setminus\mathcal{B} \). Interestingly this quantity is always strictly between 0 and 1. When \(M=1\) the Hausdorff dimension of \(\mathcal {U}\setminus \mathcal{B}\) is \[ \frac{\log 2}{3\log \lambda^*}\approx 0.368699, \] where \(\lambda^*\) is the unique root in \((1, 2)\) of the equation \(x^5-x^4-x^3-2x^2+x+1=0\).