Generalized golden ratios of ternary alphabets (Q550567)

For a given non-integer base \(q>1\) a real number \(x\) may have several different expansions \(x=\sum_{i\geq 1} c_i/q^i\) with digits \(c_i\in\{0,1,\ldots,\lfloor q\rfloor\}\). On two-letter digits sets \(A=\{a_1, a_2\}\) it is known that there exist nontrivial unique expansions in base \(q\) if and only if \(q>(1+\sqrt{5})/2\). In the present paper, the authors are interested in identifying the critical bases for ternary alphabets \(A=\{a_1,a_2,a_3\}\). A normalization allows to reduce the problem to alphabets of the form \(A=\{0,1,m\}\) with \(m\geq 2\). The main result is as follows (Theorem 1.1): There exists a continuous function \(p: [2,\infty)\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\), \(m\mapsto p_m\), with \(2\leq p_m \leq P_m:=1+\sqrt{m/(m-1)}\) for all \(m\) such that for each \(m\geq 2\), there exist nontrivial univoque expansions (i.e., unique expansions of 1) if \(q>p_m\) and there are no such expansions if \(q<p_m\); \(p_m=2\) if and only if \(m=2^k\) for some positive integer \(k\); the set \(C:=\{m\geq 2:\quad p_m=P_m\}\) is a Cantor set whose smallest element is 1 plus the first Pisot number; each connected component of \([2,\infty)\setminus C\) contains a point such that \(p\) is strictly decreasing on the left and strictly increasing on the right of that point within the component. Moreover, the function \(p\), the components and the interior points are explicitly determined.