Journal of Computational Dynamics doi:10.3934/jcd.2016006cAmerican Institute of Mathematical Sciences
RIGOROUS BOUNDS FOR POLYNOMIAL JULIA SETS
Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo1, Diego Nehab1
Jorge Stolfi2 and Joao Batista S. de Oliveira3
1IMPA, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil2Instituto de Computacao, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil3Faculdade de Informatica, PUC-RS, Porto Alegre, Brazil
(Communicated by Bernd Krauskopf)
Abstract. We present an algorithm for computing images of polynomial Juliasets that are reliable in the sense that they carry mathematical guarantees
against sampling artifacts and rounding errors in floating-point arithmetic.We combine cell mapping based on interval arithmetic with label propagationin graphs to avoid function iteration and rounding errors. As a result, our
algorithm avoids point sampling and can reliably classify entire rectangles inthe complex plane as being on either side of the Julia set. The union of therectangles that cannot be so classified is guaranteed to contain the Julia set. Our
algorithm computes a refinable quadtree decomposition of the complex planeadapted to the Julia set which can be used for rendering and for approximatinggeometric properties such as the area of the filled Julia set and the fractal
dimension of the Julia set.
1. Introduction. We all have seen many beautiful images of Julia sets , butcan we really trust these images? Images of Julia sets are typically generated byiterating a complex polynomial on a mesh of initial points in the complex plane.Points whose orbits do not go to infinity are in the filled Julia set, by definition. Thispopular rendering method, called the escape time method, raises doubts about howreliable these images are because we are left wondering whether the point samplingwas representative, whether the grid was fine enough, whether the partial orbitswere long enough, and whether rounding errors in floating-point arithmetic wererelevant but ignored. Similar qualms apply to other rendering methods.
Therefore, for all we know, the images we have seen so far may simply be numericalartifacts. Of course, it is very unlikely that these images are actually false in anyessential way, given that they have been computed independently many times andalways look the same. However, as far as we know, no one has discussed the reliabilityof existing images of Julia sets, and no one has systematically produced images ofJulia sets that carry mathematical guarantees. This is our goal here.
In the simplest setting, a reliable image is a black-and-white image whose pixelsrepresent rectangles in the complex plane such that a pixel is black if and onlyif it contains a part of the filled Julia set. Such images are also called 1-pixelapproximations because they show the set of points in the plane whose distance tothe filled Julia set is at most the diameter of a pixel.
Although cell mapping methods have been proposed before for global analysis ofdynamical systems via symbolic dynamics [18, 19, 8, 46, 20, 13, 9, 16, 21, 31, 1], asfar as we know they have not been applied to systematically approximate Julia setsof complex polynomials. (The work of Hruska [16, 17] on Hypatia may be seen as aprecursor to this but her goals were different.)
We start by defining precisely what we mean by a reliable image in 2 and bybriefly recalling the main definitions and properties of Julia sets in 3. We thendiscuss the limitations of the main known algorithms for generating images of Juliasets in 4. We present cell mapping in 5 and our algorithm in 6. We then discussits behavior and its limitations in 7, present some applications in 8 and somedirections for future work in 9.
2. Reliable images. A digital image of a compact region K inside a rectangularregion in the plane is obtained by first covering with a uniform rectangularmesh whose cells correspond to pixels2 and then assigning a color to each pixel. By
painting each rectangle with the color of the corresponding pixel, we get a subset K
of that somehow approximates K. An image is exact when K = K, but this israrely the case: it can only happen when K has the right shape and position in .
A two-color image of K tries to paint K black and the remainder of white.Typically, a pixel will be black if its center lies in K, and white otherwise. More
1To quote Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four, when you have eliminated the impossible,whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
2For our purposes, pixels are squares, despite Alvy Ray Smiths Memo, A pixel is not a littlesquare (Microsoft Technical Memo 6, July 17, 1995).
4 L.H. DE FIGUEIREDO, D. NEHAB, J. STOLFI AND J.B.S. DE OLIVEIRA
Figure 2. Top: A region in the plane and a two-color image ofit. Bottom: Three-color reliable images. Interior cells are shown inblack, exterior cells in white, border cells in gray. The left image isthe best one for the given resolution. The right one is slightly lesssharp, but remains reliable.
sophisticated sampling schemes exist and are frequently used. Nevertheless, K re-
mains an approximation of K. In particular, K provides only an approximation ofthe membership function for K and we do not know how good this approximation is.
Thus, we cannot really trust the information given by K. Even regions given byexplicit mathematical formulas require sophisticated methods for obtaining reliableimages .
We say that an image of K is reliable if it is a three-color image in which thewhite region is guaranteed to be outside K, the black region is guaranteed to beinside K, and the gray region is guaranteed to contain the boundary of K. Such animage provides a reliable partial test for membership in K: if a point is in the whiteregion, then it is not in K; if a point is in the black region, then it is in K. This testis not complete, because it does not say anything about points in the gray region,but the test is reliable because it never lies. A reliable image provides a precisemeasure of how well it approximates K: the quality of such an image is given bythe size of the gray region. The best image for a given resolution is the one whosegray cells are exactly those intersected by the boundary of K. Best images are alsocalled 1-pixel approximations. Figure 2 illustrates these concepts.
The images computed by our algorithm are reliable in the sense above, but theyare not the best images in general. Nevertheless, the information that our imagesprovide is reliable and can be used for a variety of tasks, as we shall see in 8.
RIGOROUS BOUNDS FOR POLYNOMIAL JULIA SETS 5
3. Julia sets. Let f be a complex polynomial function of degree d 2. In theclassic quadratic case, f(z) = z2 + c, where c C. Julia sets arise naturally whenwe study the dynamics of f , that is, the behavior of the discrete dynamical systeminduced on C by the iterates of f : f1 = f , f2 = f f , f3 = f f f , etc. To studythe long-term behavior of this dynamical system, we start with a point z0 C andsee what happens with the sequence zn = f
n(z0), which is called the orbit of z0under f . The aim is to be able to predict the fate of each orbit.
The orbit of a point z0 is either bounded or unbounded. It is well known thatwhen the orbit is unbounded, i