FRACTALS AND DYNAMICS IN MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS – serie

In the 50 years since Mandelbrot identified the fractality of coastlines, mathematicians and physicists have developed a rich and beautiful theory describing the interplay between analytic, geometric and probabilistic aspects of the mathematics of fractals. Using classical and abstract analytic tools developed by Cantor, Hausdorff, and Sierpinski, they have sought to address fundamental questions: How can we measure the size of a fractal set? How do waves and heat travel on irregular structures? How are analysis, geometry and stochastic processes related in the absence of Euclidean smooth structure? What new physical phenomena arise in the fractal-like settings that are ubiquitous in nature?This book introduces background and recent progress on these problems, from both established leaders in the field and early career researchers. The book gives a broad introduction to several foundational techniques in fractal mathematics, while also introducing some specific new and significant results of interest to experts, such as that waves have infinite propagation speed on fractals. It contains sufficient introductory material that it can be read by new researchers or researchers from other areas who want to learn about fractal methods and results.

We know very little about the time-evolution of many-particle dynamical systems, the subject of our book. Even the 3-body problem has no explicit solution (we cannot solve the corresponding system of differential equations, and computer simulation indicates hopelessly chaotic behaviour). For example, what can we say about the typical time evolution of a large system starting from a stage far from equilibrium? What happens in a realistic time scale? The reader's first reaction is probably: What about the famous Second Law (of thermodynamics)?Unfortunately, there are plenty of notorious mathematical problems surrounding the Second Law. (1) How to rigorously define entropy? How to convert the well known intuitions (like "disorder" and "energy spreading") into precise mathematical definitions? (2) How to express the Second Law in forms of a rigorous mathematical theorem? (3) The Second Law is a "soft" qualitative statement about entropy increase, but does not say anything about the necessary time to reach equilibrium.The object of this book is to answer questions (1)-(2)-(3). We rigorously prove a Time-Quantitative Second Law that works on a realistic time scale. As a by product, we clarify the Loschmidt-paradox and the related reversibility/irreversibility paradox.

This book is based on a series of lectures at the Mathematics Department of the University of Jena, developed in the period from 1995 up to 2015. It is completed by additional material and extensions of some basic results from the literature to more general metric spaces.This book provides a clear introduction to classical fields of fractal geometry, which provide some background for modern topics of research and applications. Some basic knowledge on general measure theory and on topological notions in metric spaces is presumed.

Studying the relationship between the geometry, arithmetic and spectra of fractals has been a subject of significant interest in contemporary mathematics. This book contributes to the literature on the subject in several different and new ways. In particular, the authors provide a rigorous and detailed study of the spectral operator, a map that sends the geometry of fractal strings onto their spectrum. To that effect, they use and develop methods from fractal geometry, functional analysis, complex analysis, operator theory, partial differential equations, analytic number theory and mathematical physics.Originally, M L Lapidus and M van Frankenhuijsen 'heuristically' introduced the spectral operator in their development of the theory of fractal strings and their complex dimensions, specifically in their reinterpretation of the earlier work of M L Lapidus and H Maier on inverse spectral problems for fractal strings and the Riemann hypothesis.One of the main themes of the book is to provide a rigorous framework within which the corresponding question "Can one hear the shape of a fractal string?" or, equivalently, "Can one obtain information about the geometry of a fractal string, given its spectrum?" can be further reformulated in terms of the invertibility or the quasi-invertibility of the spectral operator.The infinitesimal shift of the real line is first precisely defined as a differentiation operator on a family of suitably weighted Hilbert spaces of functions on the real line and indexed by a dimensional parameter c. Then, the spectral operator is defined via the functional calculus as a function of the infinitesimal shift. In this manner, it is viewed as a natural 'quantum' analog of the Riemann zeta function. More precisely, within this framework, the spectral operator is defined as the composite map of the Riemann zeta function with the infinitesimal shift, viewed as an unbounded normal operator acting on the above Hilbert space.It is shown that the quasi-invertibility of the spectral operator is intimately connected to the existence of critical zeros of the Riemann zeta function, leading to a new spectral and operator-theoretic reformulation of the Riemann hypothesis. Accordingly, the spectral operator is quasi-invertible for all values of the dimensional parameter c in the critical interval (0,1) (other than in the midfractal case when c =1/2) if and only if the Riemann hypothesis (RH) is true. A related, but seemingly quite different, reformulation of RH, due to the second author and referred to as an 'asymmetric criterion for RH', is also discussed in some detail: namely, the spectral operator is invertible for all values of c in the left-critical interval (0,1/2) if and only if RH is true.These spectral reformulations of RH also led to the discovery of several 'mathematical phase transitions' in this context, for the shape of the spectrum, the invertibility, the boundedness or the unboundedness of the spectral operator, and occurring either in the midfractal case or in the most fractal case when the underlying fractal dimension is equal to ½ or 1, respectively. In particular, the midfractal dimension c=1/2 is playing the role of a critical parameter in quantum statistical physics and the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena.Furthermore, the authors provide a 'quantum analog' of Voronin's classical theorem about the universality of the Riemann zeta function. Moreover, they obtain and study quantized counterparts of the Dirichlet series and of the Euler product for the Riemann zeta function, which are shown to converge (in a suitable sense) even inside the critical strip.For pedagogical reasons, most of the book is devoted to the study of the quantized Riemann zeta function. However, the results obtained in this monograph are expected to lead to a quantization of most classic arithmetic zeta functions, hence, further 'naturally quantizing' various aspects of analytic number theory and arithmetic geometry.The book should be accessible to experts and non-experts alike, including mathematics and physics graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, interested in fractal geometry, number theory, operator theory and functional analysis, differential equations, complex analysis, spectral theory, as well as mathematical and theoretical physics. Whenever necessary, suitable background about the different subjects involved is provided and the new work is placed in its proper historical context. Several appendices supplementing the main text are also included.

Fractals are intricate geometrical forms that contain miniature copies of themselves on ever smaller scales. This colorful book describes methods for producing an endless variety of fractal art using a computer program that searches through millions of equations looking for those few that can produce images having aesthetic appeal. Over a hundred examples of such images are included with a link to the software that produced these images, and can also produce many more similar fractals. The underlying mathematics of the process is also explained in detail.Other books by the author that could be of interest to the reader are Elegant Chaos: Algebraically Simple Chaotic Flows (J C Sprott, 2010) and Elegant Circuits: Simple Chaotic Oscillators (J C Sprott and W J Thio, 2020).

Fractalize That! A Visual Essay on Statistical Geometry brings a new class of geometric fractals to a wider audience of mathematicians and scientists. It describes a recently discovered random fractal space-filling algorithm. Connections with tessellations and known fractals such as Sierpinski are developed. And, the mathematical development is illustrated by a large number of colorful images that will charm the readers.The algorithm claims to be universal in scope, in that it can fill any spatial region with smaller and smaller fill regions of any shape. The filling is complete in the limit of an infinite number of fill regions. This book presents a descriptive development of the subject using the traditional shapes of geometry such as discs, squares, and triangles. It contains a detailed mathematical treatment of all that is currently known about the algorithm, as well as a chapter on software implementation of the algorithm.The mathematician will find a wealth of interesting conjectures supported by numerical computation. Physicists are offered a model looking for an application. The patterns generated are often quite interesting as abstract art. Readers can also create these computer-generated art with the advice and examples provided.

Welcome to the world of scale symmetry, the last elementary symmetry and the least explored!Find out how this long-neglected element transforms the traditional geometry of lines and planes into a rich landscape of trees, craggy mountains and rolling oceans.Enjoy a visual exploration through the intricate and elaborate structures of scale-symmetric geometry. See unique fractals, Mandelboxes, and automata and physical behaviors. Take part in the author's forage into the lesser-trodden regions of this landscape, and discover unusual and attractive specimens!You will also be provided with all the tools needed to recreate the structures yourself.Every example is new and developed by the author, and is chosen because it pushes the field of scale-symmetric geometry into a scarcely explored region. The results are complex and intricate but the method of generation is often simple, which allows it to be presented graphically without depending on too much mathematical syntax. If you are interested in the mathematics, science and art of scale symmetry, then read on!This is also a book for programmers and for hobbyists: those of us who like to dabble with procedural imagery and see where it leads.

This is a collection of articles, many written by people who worked with Mandelbrot, memorializing the remarkable breadth and depth of his work in science and the arts. Contributors include mathematicians, physicists, biologists, economists, and engineers, as expected; and also artists, musicians, teachers, an historian, an architect, a filmmaker, and a comic. Some articles are quite technical, others entirely descriptive. All include stories about Benoit.Also included are chapters on fractals and music by Charles Wuorinen and by Harlan Brothers, on fractals and finance by Richard Hudson and by Christian Walter, on fractal invisibility cloaks by Nathan Cohen, and a personal reminiscence by Aliette Mandelbrot.While he is known most widely for his work in mathematics and in finance, Benoit influenced almost every field of modern intellectual activity. No other book captures the breadth of all of Benoit's accomplishments.