Self similar sets, entropy and additive combinatorics

This article is an exposition of recent results on self-similar sets, asserting that if the dimension is smaller than the trivial upper bound then there are almost overlaps between cylinders. We give a heuristic derivation of the theorem using elementary arguments about covering numbers. We also give a short introduction to additive combinatorics, focusing on inverse theorems, which play a pivotal role in the proof. Our elementary approach avoids many of the technicalities in the original proof but also falls short of a complete proof. In the last section we discuss how the heuristic argument is turned into a rigorous one.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures; submitted to Proceedings of AFRT 2012. v5: more typos correcte

The geometry of fractal percolation

A well studied family of random fractals called fractal percolation is discussed. We focus on the projections of fractal percolation on the plane. Our goal is to present stronger versions of the classical Marstrand theorem, valid for almost every realization of fractal percolation. The extensions go in three directions: {itemize} the statements work for all directions, not almost all, the statements are true for more general projections, for example radial projections onto a circle, in the case $\dim_H >1$, each projection has not only positive Lebesgue measure but also has nonempty interior. {itemize}Comment: Survey submitted for AFRT2012 conferenc

The Freezeout Hypersurface at LHC from particle spectra: Flavor and Centrality Dependence

We extract the freezeout hypersurface in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=$ 2760 GeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider by analysing the data on transverse momentum spectra within a unified model for chemical and kinetic freezeout. The study has been done within two different schemes of freezeout, single freezeout where all the hadrons freezeout together versus double freezeout where those hadrons with non-zero strangeness content have different freezeout parameters compared to the non-strange ones. We demonstrate that the data is better described within the latter scenario. We obtain a strange freezeout hypersurface which is smaller in volume and hotter compared to the non-strange freezeout hypersurface for all centralities with a reduction in $\chi^2/N_{df}$ around $40\%$. We observe from the extracted parameters that the ratio of the transverse size to the freezeout proper time is invariant under expansion from the strange to the non-strange freezeout surfaces across all centralities. Moreover, except for the most peripheral bins, the ratio of the non-strange and strange freezeout proper times is close to $1.3$.Comment: Final version accepted for publicatio

Curvature-direction measures of self-similar sets

We obtain fractal Lipschitz-Killing curvature-direction measures for a large class of self-similar sets F in R^d. Such measures jointly describe the distribution of normal vectors and localize curvature by analogues of the higher order mean curvatures of differentiable submanifolds. They decouple as independent products of the unit Hausdorff measure on F and a self-similar fibre measure on the sphere, which can be computed by an integral formula. The corresponding local density approach uses an ergodic dynamical system formed by extending the code space shift by a subgroup of the orthogonal group. We then give a remarkably simple proof for the resulting measure version under minimal assumptions.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. Update for author's name chang

A process very similar to multifractional Brownian motion

In Ayache and Taqqu (2005), the multifractional Brownian (mBm) motion is obtained by replacing the constant parameter $H$ of the fractional Brownian motion (fBm) by a smooth enough functional parameter $H(.)$ depending on the time $t$. Here, we consider the process $Z$ obtained by replacing in the wavelet expansion of the fBm the index $H$ by a function $H(.)$ depending on the dyadic point $k/2^j$. This process was introduced in Benassi et al (2000) to model fBm with piece-wise constant Hurst index and continuous paths. In this work, we investigate the case where the functional parameter satisfies an uniform H\"older condition of order \beta>\sup_{t\in \rit} H(t) and ones shows that, in this case, the process $Z$ is very similar to the mBm in the following senses: i) the difference between $Z$ and a mBm satisfies an uniform H\"older condition of order $d>\sup_{t\in \R} H(t)$; ii) as a by product, one deduces that at each point $t\in \R$ the pointwise H\"older exponent of $Z$ is $H(t)$ and that $Z$ is tangent to a fBm with Hurst parameter $H(t)$.Comment: 18 page

Boundaries of Disk-like Self-affine Tiles

Let $T:= T(A, {\mathcal D})$ be a disk-like self-affine tile generated by an integral expanding matrix $A$ and a consecutive collinear digit set ${\mathcal D}$, and let $f(x)=x^{2}+px+q$ be the characteristic polynomial of $A$. In the paper, we identify the boundary $\partial T$ with a sofic system by constructing a neighbor graph and derive equivalent conditions for the pair $(A,{\mathcal D})$ to be a number system. Moreover, by using the graph-directed construction and a device of pseudo-norm $\omega$, we find the generalized Hausdorff dimension $\dim_H^{\omega} (\partial T)=2\log \rho(M)/\log |q|$ where $\rho(M)$ is the spectral radius of certain contact matrix $M$. Especially, when $A$ is a similarity, we obtain the standard Hausdorff dimension $\dim_H (\partial T)=2\log \rho/\log |q|$ where $\rho$ is the largest positive zero of the cubic polynomial $x^{3}-(|p|-1)x^{2}-(|q|-|p|)x-|q|$, which is simpler than the known result.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figure

How large dimension guarantees a given angle?

We study the following two problems: (1) Given $n\ge 2$ and \al, how large Hausdorff dimension can a compact set A\su\Rn have if $A$ does not contain three points that form an angle \al? (2) Given \al and \de, how large Hausdorff dimension can a %compact subset $A$ of a Euclidean space have if $A$ does not contain three points that form an angle in the \de-neighborhood of \al? An interesting phenomenon is that different angles show different behaviour in the above problems. Apart from the clearly special extreme angles 0 and $180^\circ$, the angles $60^\circ,90^\circ$ and $120^\circ$ also play special role in problem (2): the maximal dimension is smaller for these special angles than for the other angles. In problem (1) the angle $90^\circ$ seems to behave differently from other angles

Average distances on self-similar sets and higher order average distances of self-similar measures

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) we study different notions of the average distance between two points of a self-similar subset of ℝ, and (2) we investigate the asymptotic behaviour of higher order average moments of self-similar measures on self-similar subsets of ℝ

Multifractal tubes

Tube formulas refer to the study of volumes of $r$ neighbourhoods of sets. For sets satisfying some (possible very weak) convexity conditions, this has a long history. However, within the past 20 years Lapidus has initiated and pioneered a systematic study of tube formulas for fractal sets. Following this, it is natural to ask to what extend it is possible to develop a theory of multifractal tube formulas for multifractal measures. In this paper we propose and develop a framework for such a theory. Firstly, we define multifractal tube formulas and, more generally, multifractal tube measures for general multifractal measures. Secondly, we introduce and develop two approaches for analysing these concepts for self-similar multifractal measures, namely: (1) Multifractal tubes of self-similar measures and renewal theory. Using techniques from renewal theory we give a complete description of the asymptotic behaviour of the multifractal tube formulas and tube measures of self-similar measures satisfying the Open Set Condition. (2) Multifractal tubes of self-similar measures and zeta-functions. Unfortunately, renewal theory techniques do not yield "explicit" expressions for the functions describing the asymptotic behaviour of the multifractal tube formulas and tube measures of self-similar measures. This is clearly undesirable. For this reason, we introduce and develop a second framework for studying multifractal tube formulas of self-similar measures. This approach is based on multifractal zeta-functions and allow us obtain "explicit" expressions for the multifractal tube formulas of self-similar measures, namely, using the Mellin transform and the residue theorem, we are able to express the multifractal tube formulas as sums involving the residues of the zeta-function.Comment: 122 page

Regularity of the Solutions to SPDEs in Metric Measure Spaces

In this paper we study the regularity of non-linear parabolic PDEs and stochastic PDEs on metric measure spaces admitting heat kernel estimates. In particular we consider mild function solutions to abstract Cauchy problems and show that the unique solution is Hölder continuous in time with values in a suitable fractional Sobolev space. As this analysis is done via a-priori estimates, we can apply this result to stochastic PDEs on metric measure spaces and solve the equation in a pathwise sense for almost all paths. The main example of noise term is of fractional Brownian type and the metric measure spaces can be classical as well as given by various fractal structures. The whole approach is low dimensional and works for spectral dimensions less than 4