Brun expansions of stepped surfaces (Q629192)

Sturmian words can be characterized with the help of a desubstitution process that yields the continued fraction expansion of the angle of the associated stepped line. The present paper provides a generalization to higher dimensions, by describing a desubstitution process for stepped surfaces that characterizes stepped planes and yields the multi-dimensional continued fraction expansion of the normal vector. Formally, stepped planes and stepped surfaces are binary stepped functions, i.e., maps from \(\mathbb{Z}^d \times \{1,\dots,d\}\) to \(\{0,1\}\), with particular geometric realizations: a stepped plane is the union of facets of hypercubes approximating a hyperplane; a stepped surface admits a stepped plane as homeomorphic image under a projection. To any unimodular free group morphism \(\sigma\) (in particular, to any unimodular substitution on words \(\sigma\)), one can associate a linear map acting on the vector space of stepped functions, as in [\textit{P. Arnoux} and \textit{S. Ito}, Bull. Belg. Math. Soc. - Simon Stevin 8, No. 2, 181--207 (2001; Zbl 1007.37001)]. The first part of the paper deals with actions of the dual of such a linear map on stepped surfaces. It is shown that the image of a stepped plane normal to the vector \(\alpha \in \mathbb{R}_+^d\) by the dual map is a binary stepped function if and only if it is a stepped plane normal to the vector \(M_\sigma^T \alpha\), if and only if \(M_\sigma^T \alpha \in \mathbb{R}_+^d\), where \(M_\sigma^T\) denotes the transpose of the incidence matrix of \(\sigma\). Similarly, if the image of a stepped surface is a binary stepped function, then it is a stepped surface, which depends only on the incidence matrix \(M_\sigma\) and not on \(\sigma\) itself. In the second part of the paper, multi-dimensional continued fraction algorithms such as the Jacobi--Peron, Poincaré, Selmer and Brun algorithms are considered. It is shown how Brun expansions of vectors can be naturally extended to Brun expansions of stepped planes. By considering local geometric configurations, more precisely maximal runs of faces, one can select a Brun morphism such that the image of the stepped plane by the associated dual map is again a stepped plane. This can be extended to stepped surfaces. The main result can be read as ``the longer the Brun expansion of a stepped surface is, the closer it is to a stepped quasi-plane whose normal vector has the same Brun expansion''. (A stepped quasi-plane differs from a stepped plane only by flips along the associated hyperplane.) In particular, every stepped surface with infinite Brun expansion is a stepped quasi-plane, and it must be a stepped plane when the normal vector is totally irrational.