On Asymptotic Reducibility in SL(3,Z)

Recently we showed that Hessenberg matrices are proper to represent conjugacy classes in SL(n,Z). In this paper we focus on the reducibility properties in the set of Hessenberg matrices of SL(3,Z). We investigate the first interesting open case here: the case of matrices having one real and two complex conjugate eigenvalues.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure

Enumerating Palindromes and Primitives in Rank Two Free Groups

Let $F=$ be a rank two free group. A word $W(a,b)$ in $F$ is {\sl primitive} if it, along with another group element, generates the group. It is a {\sl palindrome} (with respect to $a$ and $b$) if it reads the same forwards and backwards. It is known that in a rank two free group any primitive element is conjugate either to a palindrome or to the product of two palindromes, but known iteration schemes for all primitive words give only a representative for the conjugacy class. Here we derive a new iteration scheme that gives either the unique palindrome in the conjugacy class or expresses the word as a unique product of two unique palindromes. We denote these words by $E_{p/q}$ where $p/q$ is rational number expressed in lowest terms. We prove that $E_{p/q}$ is a palindrome if $pq$ is even and the unique product of two unique palindromes if $pq$ is odd. We prove that the pairs $(E_{p/q},E_{r/s})$ generate the group when $|ps-rq|=1$. This improves the previously known result that held only for $pq$ and $rs$ both even. The derivation of the enumeration scheme also gives a new proof of the known results about primitives.Comment: Final revisions, to appear J Algebr

Old and new results on normality

We present a partial survey on normal numbers, including Keane's contributions, and with recent developments in different directions.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/074921706000000248 in the IMS Lecture Notes--Monograph Series (http://www.imstat.org/publications/lecnotes.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Continued fractions and transcendental numbers

It is widely believed that the continued fraction expansion of every irrational algebraic number $\alpha$ either is eventually periodic (and we know that this is the case if and only if $\alpha$ is a quadratic irrational), or it contains arbitrarily large partial quotients. Apparently, this question was first considered by Khintchine. A preliminary step towards its resolution consists in providing explicit examples of transcendental continued fractions. The main purpose of the present work is to present new families of transcendental continued fractions with bounded partial quotients. Our results are derived thanks to new combinatorial transcendence criteria recently obtained by Adamczewski and Bugeaud

On the Maillet--Baker continued fractions

We use the Schmidt Subspace Theorem to establish the transcendence of a class of quasi-periodic continued fractions. This improves earlier works of Maillet and of A. Baker. We also improve an old result of Davenport and Roth on the rate of increase of the denominators of the convergents to any real algebraic number