Paper detail

Sur un ensemble de Besicovitch

Here is an example of a plane set of vanishing area and consisting of line-segments whose directions cover an angle : let E be a Cantor set of dissection ratio 1/4 (therefore dimension 1/2) carried by the horizontal axis and E' the image of E by an homothetic transformation of ratio 2 whose center is not on the horizontal axis ; the union of the line segments joining E and E' is the set in question. The example was given in 1969 by the author with a wrong proof. The present article contains a short proof based on the projection theorem of Besicovitch, and a long proof resulting from the investigation of the arithmetic, geometric and analytic properties of the horizontal sections of the set. This investigation copies the study by Richard Kenyon of a similar problem. Variations of the construction are provided in the plane and in multidimensional spaces.