Integers and Fractions

This article briefly reviews the quantum Hall effect and the contributions of the winners of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics.Comment: LaTeX, 6 pages, no figures. On the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics. To appear in Current Scienc

Palindromic continued fractions

In the present work, we investigate real numbers whose sequence of partial quotients enjoys some combinatorial properties involving the notion of palindrome. We provide three new transendence criteria, that apply to a broad class of continued fraction expansions, including expansions with unbounded partial quotients. Their proofs heavily depend on the Schmidt Subspace Theorem

Commensurable continued fractions

We compare two families of continued fractions algorithms, the symmetrized Rosen algorithm and the Veech algorithm. Each of these algorithms expands real numbers in terms of certain algebraic integers. We give explicit models of the natural extension of the maps associated with these algorithms; prove that these natural extensions are in fact conjugate to the first return map of the geodesic flow on a related surface; and, deduce that, up to a conjugacy, almost every real number has an infinite number of common approximants for both algorithms.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure