The cone of diffusions on finitely ramified fractals. (Q1413962)

The author investigates the problem of identifying a ``natural'' unique diffusion on strongly connected, self-similar fractals by considering abstract Dirichlet integrals, which have to be ``self-similar'' in the sense that they scale by a fixed constant when the fractal is scaled by one of its defining contractions. Assuming the fractals to be finitely ramified, they can be approximated by an increasing sequence of graphs such that the fractal becomes disconnected when the vertices of any given graph are removed. Thus the uniqueness question is reduced to a finite-dimensional eigenvalue problem for a superlinear renormalization map acting on the cone of possible Dirichlet forms of the initial graph. Hilbert's projective metric on cones can be applied and turns out to be contracted by positivity or by superadditivity. For uniqueness two necessary and sufficient criteria are derived, and in the case of ambiguity the shape and location of the cone of self-similar Dirichlet forms is described.