title: Generation of fractals from incursive automata, digital diffusion and wave equation systems.
abstract: This paper describes modelling tools for formal systems design in the fields of information and physical systems. The concept and method of incursion and hyperincursion are first applied to the fractal machine, an hyperincursive cellular automata with sequential computations with exclusive or where time plays a central role. Simulations show the generation of fractal patterns. The computation is incursive, for inclusive recursion, in the sense that an automaton is computed at future time t + 1 as a function of its neighbouring automata at the present and/or past time steps but also at future time t + 1. The hyperincursion is an incursion when several values can be generated for each time step. External incursive inputs cannot be transformed to recursion. This is really a practical example of the final cause of Aristotle. Internal incursive inputs defined at the future time can be transformed to recursive inputs by self-reference defining then a self-referential system. A particular case of self-reference with the fractal machine shows a non deterministic hyperincursive field. The concepts of incursion and hyperincursion can be related to the theory of hypersets where a set includes itself. Secondly, the incursion is applied to generate fractals with different scaling symmetries. This is used to generate the same fractal at different scales like the box counting method for computing a fractal dimension. The simulation of fractals with an initial condition given by pictures is shown to be a process similar to a hologram. Interference of the pictures with some symmetry gives rise to complex patterns. This method is also used to generate fractal interlacing. Thirdly, it is shown that fractals can also be generated from digital diffusion and wave equations, that is to say from the modulo N of their finite difference equations with integer coefficients.
authors.affiliation: University of Liege, Institute of Mathematics, Belgium. dubois@lema.ulg.ac.be
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Dubois
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D017709:Fractals; D007256:Information Systems; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D010684:Philosophy; D055585:Physical Phenomena; D010825:Physics