Pointwise Convergence of Ergodic Averages Along Integer Cantor Sets

Abstract

Let $d \geq 3$, \[ D \subsetneq \{ 0,1,\dots,d-1\}, \qquad |D| \geq 2, \ 0 \in D \] be a finite alphabet, and define the integer Cantor set \begin{align} \mathcal{C} := \mathcal{C}_{D} := \bigcup_{J \geq 0} \Big\{ \sum_{j =0}^J a_j d^j : a_j \in D \Big\}. \end{align} We prove that for any $\sigma$-finite measure-preserving system, $(X,\mu,T)$, and any $f \in L^p(X)$, $2\leq p<\infty$, the ergodic averages \begin{align} \frac{1}{|\mathcal{C}_N|} \sum_{n \in \mathcal{C}_N } f(T^n x), \qquad \mathcal{C}_N := \mathcal{C} \cap \{1,2,\dots,N \} \end{align} converge $\mu$-almost everywhere. By rescaling, this allows us to resolve the question of lacunary differentiation of Cantor measures at self-similar scales: if \begin{align} \mathcal{C}' := \Big\{ \sum_{j \geq 1} a_j d^{-j} : a_j \in D \Big\} \subset [0,1] \end{align} is a real-variable Cantor set, and $\nu$ denotes its natural measure, then we prove that \begin{align} \lim_{k \to \infty} \int f(x-d^{-k} t) \ d\nu(t) = f(x) \end{align} Lebesgue almost-everywhere for any $f \in L^2_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R})$.