Irrational rotations and 2-filling rays

Abstract

We study a skew product transformation associated to an irrational rotation of the circle [0,1]/~. This skew product keeps track of the number of times an orbit of the rotation lands in the two complementary intervals of {0,1/2} in the circle. We show that under certain conditions on the continued fraction expansion of the irrational number defining the rotation, the skew product transformation has certain dense orbits. This is in spite of the presence of numerous non-dense orbits. We use this to construct laminations on infinite type surfaces with exotic properties. In particular, we show that for every infinite type surface with an isolated planar end, there is an infinite clique of 2-filling rays based at that end. These 2-filling rays are relevant to Bavard--Walker's loop graphs.