How likely is buffon's needle to fall near a planar cantor set?

Yuval Peres, Boris Solomyak

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Let Λ be a compact planar set of positive finite one-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Suppose that the intersection of Λ with any rectifiable curve has zero length. Then a theorem of Besicovitch (1939) states that the orthogonal projection of Λ on almost all lines has zero length. Consequently, the probability p(Λ, ε) that a needle dropped at random will fall within distance ε from Λ, tends to zero with ε. However, existing proofs do not yield any explicit upper bound tending to zero for p(Λ, ε), even in the simplest cases, e.g., when Λ = K2 is the Cartesian square of the middle-haif Cantor set K. In this paper we establish such a bound for a class of selfsimilar sets Λ that includes K2. We also determine the order of magnitude of p(Λ, ε) for certain stochastically self-similar sets Λ. Determining the order of magnitude of p(K2, ε) is an unsolved problem.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)473-496
Number of pages24
JournalPacific Journal of Mathematics
Volume204
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2002
Externally publishedYes

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