Let $m,\,r\in {\mathbb {Z}}$ and $\omega \in {\mathbb {R}}$ satisfy $0\leqslant r\leqslant m$ and $\omega \geqslant 1$. Our main result is a generalized continued fraction for an expression involving the partial binomial sum $s_m(r) = \sum _{i=0}^r\binom{m}{i}$. We apply this to create new upper and lower bounds for $s_m(r)$ and thus for $g_{\omega,m}(r)=\omega ^{-r}s_m(r)$. We also bound an integer $r_0 \in \{0,\,1,\,\ldots,\,m\}$ such that $g_{\omega,m}(0)<\cdots < g_{\omega,m}(r_0-1)\leqslant g_{\omega,m}(r_0)$ and $g_{\omega,m}(r_0)>\cdots >g_{\omega,m}(m)$. For real $\omega \geqslant \sqrt 3$ we prove that $r_0\in \{\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor,\,\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor +1\}$, and also $r_0 =\lfloor \frac {m+2}{\omega +1}\rfloor$ for $\omega \in \{3,\,4,\,\ldots \}$ or $\omega =2$ and $3\nmid m$.

Let $x\in [0,1)$ be an irrational number and let $x=[a_{1}(x),a_{2}(x),\ldots ]$ be its continued fraction expansion with partial quotients $\{a_{n}(x): n\geq 1\}$. Given a natural number m and a vector $(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{m})\in [0,1)^{m},$ we derive the asymptotic behaviour of the shortest distance function

$$ \begin{align*} M_{n,m}(x_{1},\ldots,x_{m})=\max\{k\in \mathbb{N}: a_{i+j}(x_{1})=\cdots= a_{i+j}(x_{m}) \ \text{for}~ j=1,\ldots,k \mbox{ and some } i \mbox{ with } 0\leq i \leq n-k\}, \end{align*} $$

which represents the run-length of the longest block of the same symbol among the first n partial quotients of $(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{m}).$ We also calculate the Hausdorff dimension of the level sets and exceptional sets arising from the shortest distance function.

For any x in $[0,1)$ , let $[a_1(x),a_2(x),a_3(x),\ldots ]$ be its continued fraction. Let $\psi :\mathbb {N}\to \mathbb {R}^+$ be such that $\psi (n) \to \infty $ as $n\to \infty $ . For any positive integers s and t, we study the set

$$ \begin{align*}E(\psi)=\{(x,y)\in [0,1)^2: \max\{a_{sn}(x), a_{tn}(y)\}\ge \psi(n) \ {\text{for all sufficiently large}}\ n\in \mathbb{N}\} \end{align*} $$

and determine its Hausdorff dimension.

This paper is concerned with the growth rate of the product of consecutive partial quotients relative to the denominator of the convergent for the continued fraction expansion of an irrational number. More precisely, given a natural number $m,$ we determine the Hausdorff dimension of the following set:

$$ \begin{align*} E_m(\tau)=\bigg\{x\in [0,1): \limsup\limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{\log (a_n(x)a_{n+1}(x)\cdots a_{n+m}(x))}{\log q_n(x)}=\tau\bigg\}, \end{align*} $$

where $\tau $ is a nonnegative number. This extends the dimensional result of Dirichlet nonimprovable sets (when $m=1$ ) shown by Hussain, Kleinbock, Wadleigh and Wang.

In the field of formal power series over a finite field, we prove a result which enables us to construct explicit examples of $U_{m}$ -numbers by using continued fraction expansions of algebraic formal power series of degree $m>1$ .

For a positive real number $t$, define the harmonic continued fraction

$$\begin{eqnarray}\text{HCF}(t)=\biggl[\frac{t}{1},\frac{t}{2},\frac{t}{3},\ldots \biggr].\end{eqnarray}$$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\text{HCF}(t)=\frac{1}{1-2t(\frac{1}{t+2}-\frac{1}{t+4}+\frac{1}{t+6}-\cdots \,)}.\end{eqnarray}$$

For an irrational number $x\in [0,1)$, let $x=[a_{1}(x),a_{2}(x),\ldots ]$ be its continued fraction expansion with partial quotients $\{a_{n}(x):n\geq 1\}$. Given $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}\in \mathbb{N}$, for $n\geq 1$, the $n$th longest block function of $x$ with respect to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}$ is defined by $L_{n}(x,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9})=\max \{k\geq 1:a_{j+1}(x)=\cdots =a_{j+k}(x)=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}~\text{for some}~j~\text{with}~0\leq j\leq n-k\}$, which represents the length of the longest consecutive sequence whose elements are all $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}$ from the first $n$ partial quotients of $x$. We consider the growth rate of $L_{n}(x,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9})$ as $n\rightarrow \infty$ and calculate the Hausdorff dimensions of the level sets and exceptional sets arising from the longest block function.

Given a sequence of polynomials $\{x_k(q)\}_{k \ges 0}$, define the transformation

$$y_n(q) = a^n\sum\limits_{i = 0}^n {\left( \matrix{n \cr i} \right)} b^{n-i}x_i(q)$$

$n\ges 0$

$[x_{i+j}(q)]_{i,j \ges 0}$

$\{y_n(q)\}_{n\ges 0}$

In 1984, K. Mahler asked how well elements in the Cantor middle third set can be approximated by rational numbers from that set and by rational numbers outside of that set. We consider more general missing digit sets $C$ and construct numbers in $C$ that are arbitrarily well approximable by rationals in $C$, but badly approximable by rationals outside of $C$. More precisely, we construct them so that all but finitely many of their convergents lie in $C$.

A seminal result due to Wall states that if $x$ is normal to a given base $b$, then so is $rx+s$ for any rational numbers $r,s$ with $r\neq 0$. We show that a stronger result is true for normality with respect to the continued fraction expansion. In particular, suppose $a,b,c,d\in \mathbb{Z}$ with $ad-bc\neq 0$. Then if $x$ is continued fraction normal, so is $(ax+b)/(cx+d)$.

For any positive integer $M$ we show that there are infinitely many real quadratic fields that do not admit $M$-ary universal quadratic forms (without any restriction on the parity of their cross coefficients).

In this paper, we study rational approximations for certain algebraic power series over a finite field. We obtain results for irrational elements of strictly positive degree satisfying an equation of the type

$$\alpha =\frac{A{{\alpha }^{q}}+B}{C{{\alpha }^{q}}},$$

where $\left( A,B,C \right)\,\in \,{{\left( {{\mathbb{F}}_{q}}\left[ X \right] \right)}^{2}}\times \mathbb{F}_{q}^{*}\left[ X \right]$. In particular, under some conditions on the polynomials $A,\,B$ and $C$, we will give well approximated elements satisfying this equation.

Dufresnoy and Pisot characterized the smallest Pisot number of degree $n\,\ge \,3$ by giving explicitly its minimal polynomial. In this paper, we translate Dufresnoy and Pisot’s result to the Laurent series case. The aim of this paper is to prove that the minimal polynomial of the smallest Pisot element $\left( \text{SPE} \right)$ of degree $n$ in the field of formal power series over a finite field is given by $P\left( Y \right)\,=\,{{Y}^{n}}\,-\,\alpha X{{Y}^{n-1}}\,-{{\alpha }^{n}}$ where $\alpha $ is the least element of the finite field ${{\mathbb{F}}_{q}}\backslash \left\{ 0 \right\}$ (as a finite total ordered set). We prove that the sequence of SPEs of degree $n$ is decreasing and converges to $\alpha X$. Finally, we show how to obtain explicit continued fraction expansion of the smallest Pisot element over a finite field.

Conjecturally, the only real algebraic numbers with bounded partial quotients in their regular continued fraction expansion are rationals and quadratic irrationals. We show that the corresponding statement is not true for complex algebraic numbers in a very strong sense, by constructing, for every even degree $d$, algebraic numbers of degree $d$ that have bounded complex partial quotients in their Hurwitz continued fraction expansion. The Hurwitz expansion is the complex generalization of the nearest integer continued fraction for real numbers. In the case of real numbers the boundedness of regular and nearest integer partial quotients is equivalent.

We establish measures of non-quadraticity and transcendence measures for real numbers whose sequence of partial quotients has sublinear block complexity. The main new ingredient is an improvement of Liouville’s inequality giving a lower bound for the distance between two distinct quadratic real numbers. Furthermore, we discuss the gap between Mahler’s exponent w2 and Koksma’s exponent w*2.

We associate with a word w on a finite alphabet A an episturmian (or Arnoux-Rauzy) morphism and a palindrome. We study their relations with the similar ones for the reversal of w. Then when |A|=2 we deduce, using the Sturmian words that are the fixed points of the two morphisms, a proof of a Galois theorem on purely periodic continued fractions whose periods are the reversal of each other.

On the basis of the Karlin and McGregor result, which states that the transition probability functions of a birth and death process can be expressed via the introduction of an orthogonal polynomial system and a spectral measure, we investigate in this paper how the Laplace transforms and the distributions of different transient characteristics related to excursions of a birth and death process can be expressed by means of the basic orthogonal polynomial system and the spectral measure. This allows us in particular to give a probabilistic interpretation of the series introduced by Stieltjes to study the convergence of the fundamental continued fraction associated with the system. Throughout the paper, we pay special attention to the case when the birth and death process is ergodic. Under the assumption that the spectrum of the spectral measure is discrete, we show how the distributions of different random variables associated with excursions depend on the fundamental continued fraction, the orthogonal polynomial system and the spectral measure.

We take a fresh look at some transient characteristics of an M/M/∞ queue, studied previously by Guillemin and Simonian using delicate complex analysis. Along the way we obtain the Laplace transform of the joint distribution of the duration, number of arrivals and swept area associated with a busy period of an M/M/1 queue.