Fractal continuation (Q378144)

The authors introduce the novel concept of fractal continuation, which is a new method for analytically continuing (traditional) analytic functions as well as for fractal functions. Here, a fractal function is defined as a function \(f: I\to\mathbb{R}^{M-1}\), where \(I\subset\mathbb{R}\) is a compact interval, whose graph \(G(f)\) is the attractor of an iterated function system (IFS). In general, \(G(f)\) has non-integral Hausdorff or box dimension. It is shown that if fractal continuation is applied to a locally defined real-analytic function it yields the standard analytic continuation. However, applying fractal continuation to a fractal function produces an infinite set of continuations. It is proved that in the case of an IFS with \(N=2\) functions and for \(M=2\), i.e., for scalar-valued fractal functions, the set of continuations depends only on the function \(f\) but is independent of the particular IFS that produced it. The authors conjecture that the result holds for general \(M\) and \(N\).