Subexponentially increasing sum of partial quotients in continued fraction expansions

Lingmin Liao, Michal Rams

Published 2014-05-19, updated 2015-10-28Version 2

We investigate from multifractal analysis point of view the increasing rate of the sum of partial quotients $S\_n(x)=\sum\_{j=1}^n a\_j(x)$, where $x=[a\_1(x), a\_2(x), \cdots ]$ is the continued fraction expansion of an irrational $x\in (0,1)$. Precisely, for an increasing function $\varphi: \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$, one is interested in the Hausdorff dimension of the sets \[ E\_\varphi = \left\{x\in (0,1): \lim\_{n\to\infty} \frac {S\_n(x)} {\varphi(n)} =1\right\}. \] Several cases are solved by Iommi and Jordan, Wu and Xu, and Xu. We attack the remaining subexponential case $\exp(n^\beta), \ \beta \in [1/2, 1)$. We show that when $\beta \in [1/2, 1)$, $E\_\varphi$ has Hausdorff dimension $1/2$. Thus surprisingly the dimension has a jump from $1$ to $1/2$ at the increasing rate $\exp(n^{1/2})$. In a similar way, the distribution of the largest partial quotients is also studied.