Odometers in non-compact spaces

Abstract: We define an odometer in the Baire space. That is the non-compact space of one sided sequences of natural numbers. We go on to prove that it is topologically conjugated to the dyadic odometer restricted to an appropriate non-compact subset of the space of one sided sequences on two symbols. We extend the action of the odometer to finite words. It turns out that, arranging the finite words in appropriate binary tree, this extension runs through the tree from left-right and top-down. Several well known binary trees made out of rational numbers, such as the Kepler tree or the Calkin and Wilf tree, are recovered in this way. Indeed, it suffices to identify finite words with rational numbers by means of certain continued fractions. The odometric action allow us to recover, in a unified way, several counting results for the rational numbers. Moreover, associated to certain interval maps with countably many branches we construct their corresponding odometers. Explicit formulas are provided in the cases of the Gauss map (continued fractions) and the Renyi map (backward continued fractions).