Some high-complexity Hamiltonians with purely singular continuous spectrum (Q696358)

The spectrum of one-dimensional discrete Schrödinger operators is related to combinatorial properties of their sequences of potentials. In particular, the block-complexity (i.e., the number of blocks of each length occurring in the sequence) of the sequence of potentials plays a role in determining the nature of the spectrum of the operator: periodic potentials lead to purely absolutely continuous spectra, Sturmian potentials (those having the smallest block-complexity among the nonperiodic sequences) give purely singular continuous spectra, while random potentials give almost surely pure joint spectra. Here, the authors construct examples of potentials having high block-complexity and purely singular continuous spectra. They use in particular a criterion of Hof-Knill-Simon concerning sequences that are minimal and contain arbitrarily long palindromes [\textit{A. Hof}, \textit{O. Knill} and \textit{B. Simon}, Commun. Math. Phys. 174, No. 1, 149-159 (1995; Zbl 0839.11009)]. Note that the work by \textit{J.-P. Allouche} [Palindrome complexity, Theor. Comput. Sci. 292, No. 1, 9-31 (2003)] has appeared.