Hölder Parameterization of Iterated Function Systems and a Self-Affine Phenomenon

Abstract We investigate the Hölder geometry of curves generated by iterated function systems (IFS) in a complete metric space. A theorem of Hata from 1985 asserts that every connected attractor of an IFS is locally connected and path-connected. We give a quantitative strengthening of Hata’s theorem. First we prove that every connected attractor of an IFS is (1/s)-Hölder path-connected, where s is the similarity dimension of the IFS. Then we show that every connected attractor of an IFS is parameterized by a (1/ α)-Hölder curve for all α > s. At the endpoint, α = s, a theorem of Remes from 1998 already established that connected self-similar sets in Euclidean space that satisfy the open set condition are parameterized by (1/s)-Hölder curves. In a secondary result, we show how to promote Remes’ theorem to self-similar sets in complete metric spaces, but in this setting require the attractor to have positive s-dimensional Hausdorff measure in lieu of the open set condition. To close the paper, we determine sharp Hölder exponents of parameterizations in the class of connected self-affine Bedford-McMullen carpets and build parameterizations of self-affine sponges. An interesting phenomenon emerges in the self-affine setting. While the optimal parameter s for a self-similar curve in ℝn is always at most the ambient dimension n, the optimal parameter s for a self-affine curve in ℝn may be strictly greater than n.