Winning property of badly approximable points on curves

Abstract

We prove that badly approximable points on any analytic nondegenerate curve in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$ are an absolute winning set. This confirms a key conjecture in the area stated by Badziahin and Velani in 2014 that represents a far-reaching generalization of Davenport’s problem from the 1960s. Among various consequences of our main result is a solution to Bugeaud’s problem on real numbers badly approximable by algebraic numbers of arbitrary degree. The proof relies on new ideas from fractal geometry and homogeneous dynamics.