Ends of iterated function systems (Q2509940)

In this paper the problem of describing properties of the attractor of an iterated function system (IFS) is approached from the algebraic properties of the semigroup associated to the IFS. The main result (with the convention that the point in a topological space comprising that one point is not isolated) is that the number of ends of the Cayley graph of the semigroup defined by an IFS is an upper bound for the number of non-degenerate components of the attractor with possibly countably many isolated points each of which corresponds to an idempotent in the semigroup. In particular, the attractor is connected if the graph has one end and the semigroup has no idempotents. Examples show that a connected attractor does not force the graph to be one-ended, leading to the formulation of the conjecture that if the attractor is connected then the IFS can be augmented with some additional functions to create an IFS whose graph is one-ended that has the same attractor.