Dynamics of simplicial systems and multidimensional continued fraction algorithms

Abstract: Motivated by the richness of the Gauss algorithm which allows to efficiently compute the best approximations of a real number by rationals, many mathematicians have suggested generalisations to study Diophantine approximations of vectors in higher dimensions. Examples include Poincaré's algorithm introduced at the end of the 19th century or those of Brun and Selmer in the middle of the 20th century. Since the beginning of the 90's to the present day, there has been many works studying the convergence and dynamics of these multidimensional continued fraction algorithms. In particular, Schweiger and Broise have shown that the approximation sequence built using Selmer and Brun algorithms converge to the right vector with an extra ergodic property. On the other hand, Nogueira demonstrated that the algorithm proposed by Poincaré almost never converges.

Starting from the classical case of Farey's algorithm, which is an "additive" version of Gauss's algorithm, I will present a combinatorial point of view on these algorithms which allows to us to use a random walk approach. In this model, taking a random vector for the Lebesgue measure will correspond to following a random walk with memory in a labelled graph called symplicial system. The laws of probability for this random walk are elementary and we can thus develop probabilistic techniques to study their generic dynamical behaviour. This will lead us to describe a purely graph theoretic criterion to check the convergence of a continued fraction algorithm.

dynamical systemsnumber theory

Audience: researchers in the topic

( paper | slides )

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One World Numeration seminar

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