Non-degeneracy of the harmonic structure on Sierpiński gaskets (Q2421722)

Summary: We prove that the harmonic extension matrices for the two dimensional level-\(k\) Sierpiński gasket are invertible for every \(k \geq 2\). This has been previously conjectured to be true by \textit{M. Hino} in [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 100, No. 1, 269--302 (2010; Zbl 1185.60089); J. Fractal Geom. 3, No. 3, 245--263 (2016; Zbl 1357.28011)] and tested numerically for \(k \leqslant 50\). We also give a necessary condition for the non-degeneracy of the harmonic structure for general finitely ramified self-similar sets based on the vertex connectivity of their first graph approximation.