Staircases in Z^2

Felix Breuer, Frederik von Heymann

Published 2009-06-05Version 1

A staircase is the set of points in Z^2 below a given rational line in the plane that have Manhattan Distance less than 1 to the line. Staircases are closely related to Beatty and Sturmian sequences of rational numbers. Connecting the geometry and the number theoretic concepts, we obtain three equivalent characterizations of Sturmian sequences of rational numbers, as well as a new proof of Barvinok's Theorem in dimension two, a recursion formula for Dedekind-Carlitz polynomials and a partially new proof of White's characterization of empty lattice tetrahedra. Our main tool is a recursive description of staircases in the spirit of the Euclidean Algorithm.