Quantum Kronecker Fractions

Abstract

A few years ago Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko introduced an interesting quantization of the real numbers as certain power series in a quantization parameter q. It is known now that the golden ratio has minimal radius among all these series. We study the rational numbers having maximal radius of convergence equal to 1, which we call Kronecker fractions. We prove that the corresponding continued fraction expansions must be palindromic and describe all Kronecker fractions with prime denominators. We found several infinite families of Kronecker fractions and all Kronecker fractions with denominator less than 10000. We also comment on the irrational case and on the relation with braids, rational knots and links.