Periodic intermediate $\beta$-expansions of Pisot numbers

Abstract

The subshift of finite type property (also known as the Markov property) is ubiquitous in dynamical systems and the simplest and most widely studied class of dynamical systems are $\beta$-shifts, namely transformations of the form $T_{\beta, \alpha} \colon x \mapsto \beta x + \alpha \bmod{1}$ acting on $[-\alpha/(\beta - 1), (1-\alpha)/(\beta - 1)]$, where $(\beta, \alpha) \in \Delta$ is fixed and where $\Delta = \{ (\beta, \alpha) \in \mathbb{R}^{2} \colon \beta \in (1,2) \; \text{and} \; 0 \leq \alpha \leq 2-\beta \}$. Recently, it was shown, by Li et al. (Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 147(5): 2045-2055, 2019), that the set of $(\beta, \alpha)$ such that $T_{\beta, \alpha}$ has the subshift of finite type property is dense in the parameter space $\Delta$. Here, they proposed the following question. Given a fixed $\beta \in (1, 2)$ which is the $n$-th root of a Perron number, does there exists a dense set of $\alpha$ in the fiber $\{\beta\} \times (0, 2- \beta)$, so that $T_{\beta, \alpha}$ has the subshift of finite type property? We answer this question in the positive for a class of Pisot numbers. Further, we investigate if this question holds true when replacing the subshift of finite type property by the property of beginning sofic (that is a factor of a subshift of finite). In doing so we generalise, a classical result of Schmidt (Bull. London Math. Soc., 12(4): 269-278, 1980) from the case when $\alpha = 0$ to the case when $\alpha \in (0, 2 - \beta)$. That is, we examine the structure of the set of eventually periodic points of $T_{\beta, \alpha}$ when $\beta$ is a Pisot number and when $\beta$ is the $n$-th root of a Pisot number.