Substitutions and \(1/2\)-discrepancy of \(\{n \theta + x\}\) (Q2889252)

Let \(\theta\) be an irrational number and let \(x\in [0,1)\). Then the \(1/2\)-discrepancy sums of the sequence \(\{x+i\theta\}\), \(i=0, 1, 2, \ldots\) is defined by \(S_n(x)=\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}f(x+i\theta)\), where \(f(x)=\chi_{[0,1/2)}(x)-\chi_{[1/2,1)}(x)\) for \(x\in [0,1)\). For convenience the maximal discrepancy \(M_n(x)=\max\{S_i(x): i=1,\ldots ,n-1\}\), the minimal discrepancy \(m_n(x)=\min\{S_i(x): i=1,\ldots ,n-1\}\), and \(\rho_n(x)=M_n(x)-m_n(x)+1\) are defined. The author shows that the sequence of values \(f(x+i\theta)\) is determined from a sequence of substitutions on an alphabet of three symbols. As an application it is shown that if \(\{c_n\}\) is an increasing sequence of positive real numbers with \(\Delta c_n=c_{n+1}-c_n=O(1)\), then there is a dense set of \(\theta\) such that if \(\{c_n\}\) is divergent then \(\limsup_{n\to\infty}M_n(0)/c_n=1\), while if \(\{c_n\}\) is bounded then so is \(M_n(0)\). The similar result for \(\{m_n(0)\}\) is shown. Furthermore the author shows that if \(\theta\) is of finite type, then \(\rho_n(x)\sim \log n\) for all \(x\).