Invariant densities for random <em>β</em>-expansions

Abstract

Let $\beta >1$ be a non-integer. We consider expansions of the form $\sum_{i=1}^{\infty} \frac{d_i}{\beta^i}$, where the digits $(d_i)_{i \geq 1}$ are generated by means of a Borel map $K_{\beta}$ defined on $\{0,1\}^{\N}\times \left[ 0, \lfloor \beta \rfloor /(\beta -1)\right]$. We show existence and uniqueness of an absolutely continuous $K_{\beta}$-invariant probability measure w.r.t. $m_p \otimes \lambda$, where $m_p$ is the Bernoulli measure on $\{0,1\}^{\N}$ with parameter $p$ $( 0 < p < 1)$ and $\lambda$ is the normalized Lebesgue measure on $[0 ,\lfloor \beta \rfloor /(\beta -1)]$. Furthermore, this measure is of the form $m_p \otimes \mu_{\beta,p}$, where $\mu_{\beta,p}$ is equivalent with $\lambda$. We establish the fact that the measure of maximal entropy and $m_p \otimes \lambda$ are mutually singular. In case $1$ has a finite greedy expansion with positive coefficients, the measure $m_p \otimes \mu_{\beta,p}$ is Markov. In the last section we answer a question concerning the number of universal expansions, a notion introduced in [EK].