Subword complexity and projection bodies (Q2474326)

The Hartman sequence \((h(P, \alpha)_k)_{k\in\mathbb{Z}}\) induced by a polytope \(P \subseteq [0, 1)^d\) and an \(\alpha \in [0, 1)^d\) is defined by \(h(P, \alpha)_k = 1\) if \(k \alpha \in P + \mathbb{Z}^d\) and \(h(P, \alpha)_k = 0\) else. The factor complexity (or subword complexity) \(p_{P,\alpha}(N)\) of this sequence is the number of different words \(h(P, \alpha)_k \cdots h(P, \alpha)_{k+N-1} \in \{0, 1\}^N\), \(k \in \mathbb{Z}\). If \(d = 1\) and \(P\) is an interval of length \(\alpha\) with irrational \(\alpha\), then this sequence is a Sturmian sequence, i.e., \(p_{P,\alpha}(N) = N + 1\). Let \(F_1, \ldots, F_L\) be the faces of \(P\) and \(u_1, \ldots, u_L\) the corresponding normal vectors, \(\lambda^k\) the \(k\)-dimensional Lebesgue measure. The main result of this paper states that \[ \lim_{N\to\infty} \frac{p_{P,\alpha}(N)}{N^d} = \frac{1}{d!} \sum_{r_1=1}^L \cdots \sum_{r_d=1}^L \bigg(|\det(u_{r_1}, \ldots, u_{r_d})| \prod_{j=1}^d \lambda^{d-1}(F_{r_j})\bigg), \] provided that \(\alpha\) is strongly irrational and that \(P\) and \(\alpha\) are \(\sigma\)-asymptotically independent for some \(\sigma > 0\). Strongly irrational means that the coefficients of \(\alpha\) together with \(1\) are linearly independent over \(\mathbb{Q}\). The notion of \(\sigma\)-asymptotic independence gathers some technical conditions needed for the proof of the theorem. It is shown that, for every polytope \(P\), these conditions are satisfied for all \(\alpha \in [0, 1)^d\) except a meager zero set. If \(P\) is a convex polytope, then the above formula simply becomes \[ \lim_{N\to\infty} \frac{p_{P,\alpha}(N)}{N^d} = \lambda^d(\Pi P), \] where \(\Pi P\) denotes the projection body of \(P\).