The irrationality exponent of an irrational number $\xi$, which measures the approximation rate of $\xi$ by rationals, is in general extremely difficult to compute explicitly, unless we know the continued fraction expansion of $\xi$. Results obtained so far are rather fragmentary and often treated case by case. In this work, we shall unify all the known results on the subject by showing that the irrationality exponents of large classes of automatic numbers and Mahler numbers (which are transcendental) are exactly equal to $2$. Our classes contain the Thue--Morse--Mahler numbers, the sum of the reciprocals of the Fermat numbers, the regular paperfolding numbers, which have been previously considered respectively by Bugeaud, Coons, and Guo, Wu and Wen, but also new classes such as the Stern numbers and so on. Among other ingredients, our proofs use results on Hankel determinants obtained recently by Han.

Let $K$ be a self-similar set satisfying the open set condition. Following Kaimanovich’s elegant idea, it has been proved that on the symbolic space $X$ of $K$ a natural augmented tree structure $E$ exists; it is hyperbolic, and the hyperbolic boundary $\partial_H X$ with the Gromov metric is H\"older equivalent to $K$. In this paper we consider certain reversible random walks with return ratio $0 < \lambda < 1$ on $(X,E)$. We show that the Martin boundary ${\mathcal M}$ can be identified with $\partial_H X$ and $K$. With this setup and a device of Silverstein, we obtain precise estimates of the Martin kernel and the Na\"im kernel in terms of the Gromov product. Moreover, the Naïm kernel turns out to be a jump kernel satisfying the estimate $\Theta (\xi,\eta) \asymp |\xi-\eta|^{-(\alpha+\beta)}$, where $\alpha$ is the Hausdorff dimension of $K$ and $\beta$ depends on $\lambda$. For suitable $\beta$, the kernel defines a regular non-local Dirichlet form on $K$. This extends the results of Kigami concerning random walks on certain trees with Cantor-type sets as boundaries.

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We show that Q-Fano varieties of fixed dimension with anti-canonical degrees and alpha-invariants bounded from below form a bounded family. As a corollary, K-semistable Q-Fano varieties of fixed dimension with anti-canonical degrees bounded from below form a bounded family.

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