Stable intersection of affine Cantor sets defined by two expanding maps (Q2423244)

Two regular Cantor sets, \(K,K^{\prime},\) are said to have stable intersection if for any pair of regular Cantor sets \((k,k^{\prime})\) `near' \((K,K^{\prime}),\) it is the case that \(k\cap k^{\prime}\) is non-empty. Questions about stable intersections of Cantor sets arise in the setting of homoclinic bifurcations in dynamical systems. Given a bounded gap \(U\) of a Cantor set \(K,\) let \(\tau_{R}(U)=\ell (I_{U})/\ell (U)\) where \(I_{U}\) is the interval to the right of \(U\) extending to the next larger gap of \(K^{c}\) and \(\ell (\cdot )\) denotes length. The right thickness of \(K\) is \(\tau_{R}(K)=\inf_{U}\tau_{R}(U)\). The left thickness is defined similarly and the thickness of \(K,\) \(\tau (K)=\min (\tau_{R}(K),\tau_{L}(K))\). It is a classical result of Newhouse that if \(\tau (K)\tau (K^{\prime})>1,\) then either the intersection of the two Cantor sets, \(K,K^{\prime},\) is non-empty, or one of the Cantor sets is contained in a gap of the other. The author proves that under the assumption that \(\tau_{L}(K)\tau_{R}(K^{\prime})\geq 1\) and \(\tau_{R}(K)\tau_{L}(K^{\prime})\geq 1,\) then the pair \(K,\lambda K^{\prime}+t\) has stable intersection and \(K-\lambda K^{\prime}\) is an interval for suitable \(\lambda\) and \(t\). Partial results are obtained when the assumption that one of the thickness products is at least \(1\) is replaced by other technical assumptions.