Developments in fractal geometry

Abstract

Iterated function systems have been at the heart of fractal geometry almost from its origins. The purpose of this expository article is to discuss new research trends that are at the core of the theory of iterated function systems (IFSs). The focus is on geometrically simple systems with finitely many maps, such as affine, projective and Möbius IFSs. There is an emphasis on topological and dynamical systems aspects. Particular topics include the role of contractive functions on the existence of an attractor (of an IFS), chaos game orbits for approximating an attractor, a phase transition to an attractor depending on the joint spectral radius, the classification of attractors according to fibres and according to overlap, the kneading invariant of an attractor, the Mandelbrot set of a family of IFSs, fractal transformations between pairs of attractors, tilings by copies of an attractor, a generalization of analytic continuation to fractal functions, and attractor–repeller pairs and the Conley “landscape picture” for an IFS.