Sets of block structure and discrepancy estimates
We consider subshifts arising from primitive substitutions, which are known to be uniquely ergodic dynamical systems. In order to precise this point, we introduce a symbolic notion of discrepancy. We show how the distribution of such a subshift is in part ruled by the spectrum of the incidence matrices associated with the underlying substitution. We also give some applications of these results in connection with the spectral study of substitutive dynamical systems.
We show that the sequence of mantissas of the primorial numbers Pₙ, defined as the product of the first n prime numbers, is distributed following Benford's law. This is done by proving that the values of the first Chebyshev function at prime numbers are uniformly distributed modulo 1. We provide a convergence rate estimate. We also briefly treat some other sequences defined in the same way as Pₙ.