The denominators of convergents for continued fractions

Abstract

For any real number $x \in [0,1)$, we denote by $q_n(x)$ the denominator of the $n$-th convergent of the continued fraction expansion of $x$ $(n \in \mathbb{N})$. It is well-known that the Lebesgue measure of the set of points $x \in [0,1)$ for which $\log q_n(x)/n$ deviates away from $\pi^2/(12\log2)$ decays to zero as $n$ tends to infinity. In this paper, we study the rate of this decay by giving an upper bound and a lower bound. What is interesting is that the upper bound is closely related to the Hausdorff dimensions of the level sets for $\log q_n(x)/n$. As a consequence, we obtain a large deviation type result for $\log q_n(x)/n$, which indicates that the rate of this decay is exponential.