Finding subsets of positive measure
Abstract
An important theorem of geometric measure theory (first proved by Besicovitch and Davies for Euclidean space) says that every analytic set of non-zero -dimensional Hausdorff measure contains a closed subset of non-zero (and indeed finite) -measure. We investigate the question how hard it is to find such a set, in terms of the index set complexity, and in terms of the complexity of the parameter needed to define such a closed set. Among other results, we show that given a (lightface) set of reals in Cantor space, there is always a subset on non-zero -measure definable from Kleene's . On the other hand, there are sets of reals where no hyperarithmetic real can define a closed subset of non-zero measure.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1408.1999,
title = {Finding subsets of positive measure},
author = {Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen and Jan Reimann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.1999},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
This is an extended journal version of the conference paper "The Strength of the Besicovitch--Davies Theorem". The final publication of that paper is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13962-8_26