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We consider the relationship between the Laplacians on two sequences of planar graphs, one from the theory of self-similar groups and one from analysis on fractals. By establishing a spectral decimation map between these sequences we give an elementary calculation of the spectrum of the former, which was first computed by Grigorchuk and \v{S}uni\'{c}. Our method also gives a full description of the eigenfunctions., Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures

The $4N$ carpets are a class of infinitely ramified self-similar fractals with a large group of symmetries. For a $4N$-carpet $F$, let $\{F_n\}_{n \geq 0}$ be the natural decreasing sequence of compact pre-fractal approximations with $\cap_nF_n=F$. On each $F_n$, let $\mathcal{E}(u, v) = \int_{F_N} \nabla u \cdot \nabla v \, dx$ be the classical Dirichlet form and $u_n$ be the unique harmonic function on $F_n$ satisfying a mixed boundary value problem corresponding to assigning a constant potential between two specific subsets of the boundary. Using a method introduced by Barlow and Bass (1990), we prove a resistance estimate of the following form: there is $\rho=\rho(N) > 1$ such that $\mathcal{E}(u_n, u_n)\rho^{n}$ is bounded above and below by positive constants independent of $n$. Such estimates have implications for the existence and scaling properties of Dirichlet forms on $F$.

We study the discretization of a Dirichlet form on the Koch snowflake domain and its boundary with the property that both the interior and the boundary can support positive energy. We compute eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, and demonstrate the localization of high energy eigenfunctions on the boundary via a modification of an argument of Filoche and Mayboroda. H\"older continuity and uniform approximation of eigenfunctions are also discussed.

We study the analogue of a convex interpolant of two sets on Sierpinski gaskets and an associated notion of measure transport. The structure of a natural family of interpolating measures is described and an interpolation inequality is established. A key tool is a good description of geodesics on these gaskets, some results on which have previously appeared in the literature.

We consider criteria for the differentiability of functions with continuous Laplacian on the Sierpinski Gasket and its higher-dimensional variants $SG_N$, $N>3$, proving results that generalize those of Teplyaev. When $SG_N$ is equipped with the standard Dirichlet form and measure $\mu$ we show there is a full $\mu$-measure set on which continuity of the Laplacian implies existence of the gradient $\nabla u$, and that this set is not all of $SG_N$. We also show there is a class of non-uniform measures on the usual Sierpinski Gasket with the property that continuity of the Laplacian implies the gradient exists and is continuous everywhere, in sharp contrast to the case with the standard measure., Comment: 9 pages

We provide the foundation of the spectral analysis of the Laplacian on the orbital Schreier graphs of the Basilica group, the iterated monodromy group of the quadratic polynomial $z^2-1$. This group is an important example in the class of self-similar amenable but not elementary amenable finite automata groups studied by Grigorchuk, \.Zuk, \v Suni\'c, Bartholdi, Vir\'ag, Nekrashevych, Kaimanovich, Nagnibeda et al. We prove that the spectrum of the Laplacian has infinitely many gaps and that the support of the KNS Spectral Measure is a Cantor set. Moreover, on a generic blowup, the spectrum coincides with this Cantor set, and is pure point with localized eigenfunctions and eigenvalues located at the endpoints of the gaps., Comment: 36 pages: it is proved that the spectrum generically is a Cantor set which coincides with the support of the KNS measure

We prove a strong maximum principle for Schr\"odinger operators defined on a class of fractal sets and their blowups without boundary. Our primary interest is in weaker regularity conditions than have previously appeared in the literature; in particular we permit both the fractal Laplacian and the potential to be Radon measures on the fractal. As a consequence of our results, we establish a Harnack inequality for solutions of these operators.

We adapt the well-known spectral decimation technique for computing spectra of Laplacians on certain symmetric self-similar sets to the case of magnetic Schrodinger operators and work through this method completely for the diamond lattice fractal. This connects results of physicists from the 1980's, who used similar techniques to compute spectra of sequences of magnetic operators on graph approximations to fractals but did not verify existence of a limiting fractal operator, to recent work describing magnetic operators on fractals via functional analytic techniques.

We prove existence of a measurable Riemannian structure on higher-dimensional harmonic Sierpinski gasket fractals and deduce Gaussian heat kernel bounds in the geodesic metric. Our proof differs from that given by Kigami for the usual Sierpinski gasket in that we show the geodesics are de Rham curves, for which there is an extensive regularity theory.

In the Euclidean setting the Sobolev spaces $W^{\alpha,p}\cap L^\infty$ are algebras for the pointwise product when $\alpha>0$ and $p\in(1,\infty)$. This property has recently been extended to a variety of geometric settings. We produce a class of fractal examples where it fails for a wide range of the indices $\alpha,p$.

We refine a result of Grigor'yan, Hu and Lau to give a moment condition on a heat kernel which characterizes the critical exponent at which a family of Besov spaces associated to the Dirichlet energy becomes trivial., Comment: The refinement made here is mathematically elementary. It is only posted because the weaker result in the original paper is frequently used

We extend Feynman's analysis of an infinite ladder circuit to fractal circuits, providing examples in which fractal circuits constructed with purely imaginary impedances can have characteristic impedances with positive real part. Using (weak) self-similarity of our fractal structures, we provide algorithms for studying the equilibrium distribution of energy on these circuits. This extends the analysis of self-similar resistance networks introduced by Fukushima, Kigami, Kusuoka, and more recently studied by Strichartz et al., Comment: v2: 16 pages, 8 figures. See also the recent preprint arXiv:1701.08039

We give a mathematically rigorous construction of a magnetic Schr\"odinger operator corresponding to a field with flux through finitely many holes of the Sierpinski Gasket. The operator is shown to have discrete spectrum accumulating at $\infty$, and it is shown that the asymptotic distribution of eigenvalues is the same as that for the Laplacian. Most eigenfunctions may be computed using gauge transformations corresponding to the magnetic field and the remainder of the spectrum may be approximated to arbitrary precision by using a sequence of approximations by magnetic operators on finite graphs., Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures

We extend Feynman's analysis of the infinite ladder AC circuit to fractal AC circuits. We show that the characteristic impedances can have positive real part even though all the individual impedances inside the circuit are purely imaginary. This provides a physical setting for analyzing wave propagation of signals on fractals, by analogy with the Telegrapher's Equation, and generalizes the real resistance metric on a fractal, which provides a measure of distance on a fractal, to complex impedances., Comment: v2: 9 pages, 4 figures. Updated with recent developments

The notion of an abstract convex geometry offers an abstraction of the standard notion of convexity in a linear space. Kashiwabara, Nakamura and Okamoto introduce the notion of a generalized convex shelling into $\mathbb{R}$ and prove that a convex geometry may always be represented with such a shelling. We provide a new, shorter proof of their result using a recent representation theorem of Richter and Rubinstein, and deduce a different upper bound on the dimension of the shelling., Comment: - Corrected attribution for Lemma 1 and Theorem 2 - Added an example related to generalized convex shellings of lower-bounded lattices and noted its relevance to convex dimension. - Added a section on embedding convex geometries as convex polygons, including a proof that any convex geometry may be embedded as convex polygons in R^2. - Extended the bibliography. Now 9 pages

We prove versions of the strong Sz\"ego limit theorem for certain classes of pseudodifferential operators defined on the Sierpi\'nski gasket. Our results used in a fundamental way the existence of localized eigenfunctions for the Laplacian on this fractal., Comment: Analysis on fractals, localized eigenfunctions, Sierpi\'nski gasket, Sz\"ego limit theorem

We define and study pseudo-differential operators on a class of fractals that include the post-critically finite self-similar sets and Sierpinski carpets. Using the sub-Gaussian estimates of the heat operator we prove that our operators have kernels that decay and, in the constant coefficient case, are smooth off the diagonal. Our analysis can be extended to product of fractals. While our results are applicable to a larger class of metric measure spaces with Laplacian, we use them to study elliptic, hypoelliptic, and quasi-elliptic operators on p.c.f. fractals, answering a few open questions posed in a series of recent papers. We extend our class of operators to include the so called H\"ormander hypoelliptic operators and we initiate the study of wavefront sets and microlocal analysis on p.c.f. fractals., Comment: 30 pages

We study derivations and Fredholm modules on metric spaces with a local regular conservative Dirichlet form. In particular, on finitely ramified fractals, we show that there is a non-trivial Fredholm module if and only if the fractal is not a tree (i.e. not simply connected). This result relates Fredholm modules and topology, and refines and improves known results on p.c.f. fractals. We also discuss weakly summable Fredholm modules and the Dixmier trace in the cases of some finitely and infinitely ramified fractals (including non-self-similar fractals) if the so-called spectral dimension is less than 2. In the finitely ramified self-similar case we relate the p-summability question with estimates of the Lyapunov exponents for harmonic functions and the behavior of the pressure function., Comment: to appear in the Journal of Functional Analysis 2012

We provide a method for obtaining upper estimates of the resolvent kernel of the Laplacian on a post-critically finite self-similar fractal that relies on a self-similar series decomposition of the resolvent. Decay estimates on the positive real axis are proved by analyzing functions satisfying an interior eigenfunction condition with positive eigenvalue. These lead to estimates on the complement of the negative real axis via the Phragmen-Lindelof theorem. Applications are given to kernels for functions of the Laplacian, including the heat kernel, and to proving the existence of a self-similar series decomposition for the Laplacian resolvent on fractal blowups., Comment: 46 pages

We provide two methods for constructing smooth bump functions and for smoothly cutting off smooth functions on fractals, one using a probabilistic approach and sub-Gaussian estimates for the heat operator, and the other using the analytic theory for p.c.f. fractals and a fixed point argument. The heat semigroup (probabilistic) method is applicable to a more general class of metric measure spaces with Laplacian, including certain infinitely ramified fractals, however the cut off technique involves some loss in smoothness. From the analytic approach we establish a Borel theorem for p.c.f. fractals, showing that to any prescribed jet at a junction point there is a smooth function with that jet. As a consequence we prove that on p.c.f. fractals smooth functions may be cut off with no loss of smoothness, and thus can be smoothly decomposed subordinate to an open cover. The latter result provides a replacement for classical partition of unity arguments in the p.c.f. fractal setting., Comment: 26 pages. May differ slightly from published (refereed) version

We construct a theory of distributions in the setting of analysis on post-critically finite self-similar fractals, and on fractafolds and products based on such fractals. The results include basic properties of test functions and distributions, a structure theorem showing that distributions are locally-finite sums of powers of the Laplacian applied to continuous functions, and an analysis of the distributions with point support. Possible future applications to the study of hypoelliptic partial differential operators are suggested., Comment: 38 pages

For the Laplacian $\Delta$ defined on a p.c.f. self-similar fractal, we give an explicit formula for the resolvent kernel of the Laplacian with Dirichlet boundary conditions, and also with Neumann boundary conditions. That is, we construct a symmetric function $G^{(\lambda)}$ which solves $(\lambda \mathbb{I} - \Delta)^{-1} f(x) = \int G^{(\lambda)}(x,y) f(y) d\mu(y)$. The method is similar to Kigami's construction of the Green kernel in \cite[\S3.5]{Kig01} and is expressed as a sum of scaled and "translated" copies of a certain function $\psi^{(\lambda)}$ which may be considered as a fundamental solution of the resolvent equation. Examples of the explicit resolvent kernel formula are given for the unit interval, standard Sierpinski gasket, and the level-3 Sierpinski gasket $SG_3$., Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures

We use the existence of localized eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on the Sierpinski gasket to formulate and prove analogues of the strong Szego limit theorem in this fractal setting. Furthermore, we recast some of our results in terms of equally distributed sequences., Comment: 14 pages

We consider the basilica Julia set of the polynomial $P(z)=z^{2}-1$ and construct all possible resistance (Dirichlet) forms, and the corresponding Laplacians, for which the topology in the effective resistance metric coincides with the usual topology. Then we concentrate on two particular cases. One is a self-similar harmonic structure, for which the energy renormalization factor is 2, the spectral dimension is $\log9/\log6$, and we can compute all the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions by a spectral decimation method. The other is graph-directed self-similar under the map $z\mapsto P(z)$; it has energy renormalization factor $\sqrt2$ and spectral dimension 4/3, but the exact computation of the spectrum is difficult. The latter Dirichlet form and Laplacian are in a sense conformally invariant on the basilica Julia set., Comment: 24 pages, one figure in separate eps file. Replaced the theorem that was removed in the second version, with a corrected proof. Corrected an error in the description of the energy forms (we are grateful to Jun Kigami for pointing out this error). Other minor changes

We use spectral decimation to provide formulae for computing the harmonic gradients of Laplacian eigenfunctions on the Sierpinski Gasket. These formulae are given in terms of special functions that are defined as infinite products., Comment: LaTex, 8 pages, 4 figures