Spectra of Cantor measures

Abstract

Let $\mu_{q, b}$ be the Cantor measure associated with the iterated function system $f_i(x)=x/b+i/q, 0\le i\le q-1$, where $2\le q, b/q\in \Z$. In this paper, we consider spectra and maximal orthogonal sets of the Cantor measure $\mu_{q, b}$ and their rational rescaling. We introduce a quantity to measure level difference between a branch and its subbranch for the labeling tree corresponding to a maximal orthogonal set of the Cantor measure $\mu_{q, b}$, and use certain boundedness property of that quantity as sufficient and necessary conditions for a maximal orthogonal set of the Cantor measure $\mu_{q, b}$ to be its spectrum. We show that the integrally rescaled set $K\Lambda$ is still a spectrum if it is a maximal orthogonal set, and we provide a simple characterization for the integrally rescaled set to be a maximal orthogonal set. As an application of the above characterization, we find all integers $K$ such that $K\Lambda_4$ are spectra of the Cantor measure $\mu_{2, 4}$, where $\Lambda_4:=\{\sum_{n=0}^\infty d_n 4^n: d_n\in \{0, 1\}\}\subset \Z$ is the first known spectrum for the Cantor measure $\mu_{2, 4}$. Finally we discuss rescaling spectra rationally and construct a spectrum $\Lambda$ for the Cantor measure $\mu_{q, b}$ such that $\Lambda/(b-1)$ is a maximal orthogonal set but not a spectrum.