Intermediate convergents and a metric theorem of Khinchin

A landmark theorem in the metric theory of continued fractions begins this way: Select a non-negative real function $f$ defined on the positive integers and a real number $x$, and form the partial sums $s_n$ of $f$ evaluated at the partial quotients $a_1,..., a_n$ in the continued fraction expansion for $x$. Does the sequence $\{s_n/n\}$ have a limit as n\rar\infty? In 1935 A. Y. Khinchin proved that the answer is yes for almost every $x$, provided that the function $f$ does not grow too quickly. In this paper we are going to explore a natural reformulation of this problem in which the function $f$ is defined on the rationals and the partial sums in question are over the intermediate convergents to $x$ with denominators less than a prescribed amount. By using some of Khinchin's ideas together with more modern results we are able to provide a quantitative asymptotic theorem analogous to the classical one mentioned above

Diophantine approximation and coloring

We demonstrate how connections between graph theory and Diophantine approximation can be used in conjunction to give simple and accessible proofs of seemingly difficult results in both subjects.Comment: 16 pages, pre-publication version of paper which will appear in American Mathematical Monthl

Density of orbits of semigroups of endomorphisms acting on the Adeles

We investigate the question of whether or not the orbit of a point in A/Q, under the natural action of a subset S of Q, is dense in A/Q. We prove that if the set S is a multiplicative semigroup which contains at least two multiplicatively independent elements, one of which is an integer, then the orbit under S of any point with irrational real coordinate is dense.Comment: 13 page

Constructing bounded remainder sets and cut-and-project sets which are bounded distance to lattices

For any irrational cut-and-project setup, we demonstrate a natural infinite family of windows which gives rise to separated nets that are each bounded distance to a lattice. Our proof provides a new construction, using a sufficient condition of Rauzy, of an infinite family of non-trivial bounded remainder sets for any totally irrational toral rotation in any dimension.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, updated references, changed intro to give credit to a result of Liardet which we were previously unaware o