On the topological structure of univoque sets

Erdos, Horvath and Joo discovered some years ago that for some real numbers 1 < q < 2 there exists only one sequence c(i) of zeroes and ones such that Sigma c(i) q(-i) = 1. Subsequently, the set U of these numbers was characterized algebraically in [P. Erdos, I. Joo, V. Komornik, Characterization of the unique expansions 1 = Sigma q(-ni) and related problems, Bull. Soc. Math. France 118 (1990) 377-390] and [V. Komornik, P. Loreti, Subexpansions, superexpansions and uniqueness properties in non-integer bases, Period. Math. Hungar. 44 (2) (2002) 195-216]. We establish an analogous characterization of the closure (U) over bar of U. This allows us to clarify the topological structure of these sets: (U) over bar U is a countable dense set of (U) over bar, so the latter set is perfect. Moreover, since U is known to have zero Lebesgue measure, (U) over bar is a Cantor set. (C) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved