Kempner number
Mathematical constant; sum of 1 / 2^2^n
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kempner number[1] is the sum of the series
It is named after Aubrey Kempner, who proved it transcendental in 1916.[2] It is an example of a number easy to prove transcendental which is not a Liouville number.[1]: §1
Properties
By definition, the binary expansion of the Kempner number has zeroes everywhere except at places which are powers of two:
- κ = 0.110100010000000100000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000100... (base two.)
Since the first proof of transcendence by Kempner, many other proofs have been given; see the references.[1][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Jeffrey Shallit has proven that it has a simple continued fraction expansion, obtainable by the following construction:[10]: Theorem 1
- Start with the partial expansion [0, 1, 3].
- If the partial expansion is [a, b, ..., y, z], replace it by [a, b, ..., y, z + 1, z − 1, y, ..., b].
- If this generated a zero, replace [..., a, 0, b, ...] by [..., a + b, ...].
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 indefinitely.
This generates the expansion (sequence A007400 in the OEIS)
After the first partial quotients, the remainders are all 2, 4 or 6. Since this continued fraction has bounded partial quotients, the Kempner number has irrationality measure 2.