Consider the domain $Z_{ϵ}=\{x\in {ℝ}^n;dist(x,ϵ{\mathbb{Z}}^n)>{ϵ}^{\gamma }\}$ and let the free path length be defined as ${\tau }_{ϵ}(x,v)=inf\{t>0;x-tv\in Z_{ϵ}\}.$ In the Boltzmann-Grad scaling corresponding to $\gamma =\frac{n}{n-1}$, it is shown that the limiting distribution ${\phi }_{ϵ}$ of ${\tau }_{ϵ}$ is bounded from below by an expression of the form C/t, for some C> 0. A numerical study seems to indicate that asymptotically for large t, ${\phi }_{ϵ}\sim C/t$. This is an extension of a previous work [J. Bourgain et al., Comm. Math. Phys.190 (1998) 491-508]. As a consequence, it is proved that the linear Boltzmann type transport equation is inappropriate...

Let K ⊆ ℝ be the unique attractor of an iterated function system. We consider the case where K is an interval and study those elements of K with a unique coding. We prove under mild conditions that the set of points with a unique coding can be identified with a subshift of finite type. As a consequence, we can show that the set of points with a unique coding is a graph-directed self-similar set in the sense of Mauldin and Williams (1988). The theory of Mauldin and Williams then provides a method...

This paper is devoted to a systematic study of a class of binary trees encoding the structure of rational numbers both from arithmetic and dynamical point of view. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one is mainly expository and consists in a critical review of rather standard topics such as Stern-Brocot and Farey trees and their connections with continued fraction expansion and the question mark function. In the second part we introduce two classes of (invertible and non-invertible)...