Disorder, renormalizability, theta functions and Cornu spirals (Q580418)

The paper centers about a discussion of the pictorial representation of sums of the form \(\sum^{N}_{n=0}\exp (i\pi \alpha n^ p)\), \(p>1\), in the complex plane. Therefore numerical experiments performed on a computer were helpful. The case \(p=2\) is connected to the continued fraction expansion with even denominators. The map \(T: ]-1,\quad 1[\to]- 1,\quad 1[\) defined by \(Tx=-1/x\quad mod 2\) gives a renormalization map which explains the self-similarity of the generated discrete curves.