Interior of distance trees over thin Cantor sets

Abstract

It is known that if a compact set $E$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ has Hausdorff dimension greater than $(d+1)/2$, then its $n$-chain distance set $$Δ^n(E) = \left\{\left(\left|x^1-x^2\right|,\cdots, \left|x^{n}- x^{n+1}\right|\right)\in \mathbb{R}^n: x^i \in E, x^i\neq x^j \text{ for } i\neq j \right\}$$ has nonempty interior for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$. In this paper, we prove that for every Cantor set $K\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ and for every $n\in\mathbb{N}$, there exists $\widetilde{K}\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ such that the pinned $n$-chain distance set of $K\times \widetilde{K}\subset \mathbb{R}^{2d}$ has nonempty interior, and hence, that $Δ^n(K\times \widetilde{K})$ has nonempty interior. Our results do not depend on the Newhouse gap lemma but rather on the containment lemma recently introduced by Jung and Lai. Our results generalize three-fold: to arbitrary finite trees, to higher dimensions, and to maps that have non-vanishing partials. As an application, we provide a class of examples of Cantor sets $E\subset \mathbb{R}^{2d}$ so that for any $s\geq d$, $\dim_{\rm H}(E)= s$ and $Δ_x^n(E)^\circ{}\neq \varnothing$ for some $x\in E$.