English

Descriptive properties of the type of an irrational number

General Topology 2023-07-13 v1 Logic Number Theory

Abstract

The type τ\tau(α\alpha) of an irrational number α\alpha measures the extent to which rational numbers can closely approximate α\alpha. More precisely, τ\tau(α\alpha) is the infimum over those t\inR for which |α\alpha--h/k|<k^{--t--1} has at most finitely many solutions h,k\inZ, k>0. In this paper, we regard the type as a function τ\tau:R\Q\rightarrow[1,\infty] and explore its descriptive properties. We show that τ\tau is invariant under the natural action of GL2(Q) on R\Q. We show that τ\tau is densely onto, and we compute the descriptive complexity of the pre-image of the singletons and of certain intervals. Finally, we show that the function τ\tau is [1,\infty]-upper semi-Baire class 1 complete.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.05965,
  title  = {Descriptive properties of the type of an irrational number},
  author = {William Banks and Asma Harcharras and Dominique Lecomte},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.05965},
  year   = {2023}
}