Continuity of the Hausdorff measure of continued fractions and countable alphabet iterated function systems (Q284495)

Consider the set \(J_n({\mathcal G})\) of real numbers in \([0,1]\) whose simple continued fraction expansion contains only partial quotients in the set \(\{1,\dots,n\}\). It is a clear that the Hausdorff dimension of \(J_n({\mathcal G})\) tends to \(1\) as \(n\) tends to infinity, and in fact \textit{D. Hensley} [J. Number Theory 40, No. 3, 336--358 (1992; Zbl 0745.28005)] calculated a speed of convergence. In the present paper, the authors look at the deeper level of Hausdorff measures. Let \(h_n\) denote the Hausdorff dimension of \(J_n({\mathcal G})\) and let \(H_{h_n}\) denote the \(h_n\)-dimensional (non-normalised) Hausdorff measure. The main result of the paper stated that \(H_{h_n}(J_n({\mathcal G}))\) tends to \(1\) as \(n\) tends to infinity. This is the natural limit, as the limiting set consists of all irrational numbers in \([0,1]\), which evidently has \(1\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure equal to \(1\). The authors use the machinery of conformal iterated function systems to prove their result, and it would be natural to speculate that this is a generic phenomenon for such systems. This is however \textit{not} the case, and at the end of the paper they provide an example of such a system for which the Hausdorff measure of the attractor tends to a limit as more functions are added to the system which is \textit{not} equal to the Hausdorff measure of the attractor of the full, infinite system. As a tool in proving this final result, the authors develop a simplified formula for calculating the Hausdorff measure of the attractor of a conformal iterated function system consisting only of similarities. This result is of independent interest.