Sums of powers, and products of elements of the middle third Cantor set

Abstract: The questions of the measure and finding open intervals in certain sets of sums and products of elements of the middle third Cantor set (or a variant of it), have generated considerable interest recently. A broad general framework that makes it possible to deal with these questions was outlined by Astels. The question of finding the measure of the product of the middle third Cantor set was considered recently in an article by Athreya, Reznick and Tyson. Astels' methods apply to product sets upon considering a generalized logarithmic Cantor set, while Athreya, Reznick and Tyson's methods become difficult in dealing with sums or products of $m$'th powers as $m$ becomes large. With a new elementary dynamical technique, we can deal with both the questions of sums and products in a satisfactory way, and the proofs are of the same level of complexity as that of an elementary proof of the fact that the sum of two copies of the middle third Cantor set is $[0,2]$. Further, some observations are made on the question of intersections of one central Cantor set with an affine image of another central Cantor set both with arbitrary parameters.