Sums of regular Cantor sets of large dimension and the Square Fibonacci Hamiltonian

Abstract

We show that under natural technical conditions, the sum of a $C^2$ dynamically defined Cantor set with a compact set in most cases (for almost all parameters) has positive Lebesgue measure, provided that the sum of the Hausdorff dimensions of these sets exceeds one. As an application, we show that for many parameters, the Square Fibonacci Hamiltonian has spectrum of positive Lebesgue measure, while at the same time the density of states measure is purely singular.