Kakeya sets in Cantor directions (Q932922)

For each integer \(N=3^n\) the authors provide a probabilistic construction in the plane \(\mathbb{R}^2\) of parallelograms \(P_1,\dots,P_N\) each of eccentricity \(N\) and area \(\sin 1/N\) so that the slopes of the long sides are all contained in the standard middle-thirds Cantor set. The area of the union of the \(\{P_j,j=1, \dots,N\}\) is less than or equal \(C/\log N\) with \(C\) independent of \(N\), but such that the area of the union of the doubles \(\{2P_jj=1,\dots,N\}\) is greater or equal to \(C_1(\log\log N)/\log N\). The result has a corollary that the maximal operator \(Mf(x)\), defined as the supremum over all line segments \({\mathbf s}\), with \(x\) in \(s\), whose slope is in the standard Cantor set, of the average of the function \(|f|\) on \({\mathbf s}\), is unbounded on any \(L^p(\mathbb{R}^2)\), for \(p\) not equal \(\equiv\). The result for \(p\leq 2\) was proved by the second author in [Math. Res. Lett. 3, No. 4, 527--536 (1996; Zbl 0889.42014)].