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Concept
Khinchin's constant
Summary
In number theory, Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin proved that for almost all real numbers x, coefficients ai of the continued fraction expansion of x have a finite geometric mean that is independent of the value of x and is known as Khinchin's constant.
That is, for
it is almost always true that
where is Khinchin's constant
(with denoting the product over all sequence terms).
Although almost all numbers satisfy this property, it has not been proven for any real number not specifically constructed for the purpose. Among the numbers whose continued fraction expansions apparently do have this property (based on numerical evidence) are π, the Euler-Mascheroni constant γ, Apéry's constant ζ(3), and Khinchin's constant itself. However, this is unproven.
Among the numbers x whose continued fraction expansions are known not to have this property are rational numbers, roots of quadratic equations (including the golden ratio Φ and the square roots of integers), and the base of the natural logarithm e.
Khinchin is sometimes spelled Khintchine (the French transliteration of Russian Хинчин) in older mathematical literature.
The proof presented here was arranged by Czesław Ryll-Nardzewski and is much simpler than Khinchin's original proof which did not use ergodic theory.
Since the first coefficient a0 of the continued fraction of x plays no role in Khinchin's theorem and since the rational numbers have Lebesgue measure zero, we are reduced to the study of irrational numbers in the unit interval, i.e., those in . These numbers are in bijection with infinite continued fractions of the form [0; a1, a2, ...], which we simply write [a1, a2, ...], where a1, a2, ... are positive integers. Define a transformation T:I → I by
The transformation T is called the Gauss–Kuzmin–Wirsing operator. For every Borel subset E of I, we also define the Gauss–Kuzmin measure of E
Then μ is a probability measure on the σ-algebra of Borel subsets of I. The measure μ is equivalent to the Lebesgue measure on I, but it has the additional property that the transformation T preserves the measure μ.
Official source
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