Narrow Results

Discrete scale invariance, which corresponds to a partial breaking of the scaling symmetry, is reflected in the existence of a hierarchy of characteristic scales l₀,l₀λ,l₀λ²,…, where λ is a preferred scaling ratio and l₀ a microscopic cut-off. Signatures of discrete scale invariance have recently been found in a variety of systems ranging from rupture, earthquakes, Laplacian growth phenomena, "animals" in percolation to financial market crashes. We believe it to be a quite general, albeit subtle phenomenon. Indeed, the practical problem in uncovering an underlying discrete scale invariance is that standard ensemble averaging procedures destroy it as if it was pure noise. This is due to the fact, that while λ only depends on the underlying physics, l₀ on the contrary is realization-dependent. Here, we adapt and implement a novel so-called "canonical" averaging scheme which re-sets the l₀ of different realizations to approximately the same value. The method is based on the determination of a realization-dependent effective critical point obtained from, e.g., a maximum susceptibility criterion. We demonstrate the method on diffusion limited aggregation and a model of rupture.

Lapidus and Pearse proved recently an interesting formula about the volume of tubular neighborhoods of fractal sprays, including the self-similar fractals. We consider the graph-directed fractals in the sense of graph self-similarity of Mauldin-Williams within this framework of Lapidus-Pearse. Extending the notion of complex dimensions to the graph-directed fractals we compute the volumes of tubular neighborhoods of their associated tilings and give a simplified and pointwise proof of a version of Lapidus-Pearse formula, which can be applied to both self-similar and graph-directed fractals.