Badly approximable points on planar curves and a problem of Davenport

Abstract: Let C be two times continuously differentiable curve in R^2 with at least one point at which the curvature is non-zero. For any i,j > 0 with i+j =1, let Bad(i,j) denote the set of points (x,y) in R^2 for which max {||qx ||^{1/i}, ||qy||^{1/j}} > c/q for all integers q >0. Here c = c(x,y) is a positive constant. Our main result implies that any finite intersection of such sets with C has full Hausdorff dimension. This provides a solution to a problem of Davenport dating back to the sixties.