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Mandelbrot Set

The term Mandelbrot set is used to refer both to a general class of fractal sets and to a particular
instance of such a set. In general, a Mandelbrot set marks the set of points in the complex plane
such that the corresponding Julia set is connected and not computable.

"The" Mandelbrot set is the set obtained from the quadratic recurrence equation

(1)

with , where points in the complex plane for which the orbit of does not tend to infinity
are in the set. Setting equal to any point in the set that is not a periodic point gives the same
result. The Mandelbrot set was originally called a molecule by Mandelbrot. J. Hubbard and
A. Douady proved that the Mandelbrot set is connected.

A plot of the Mandelbrot set is shown above in which values of in the complex plane are
colored according to the number of steps required to reach . The kidney bean-shaped
portion of the Mandelbrot set turns out to be bordered by a cardioid with equations

(2)
 (3)

The adjoining portion is a circle with center at and radius .

The region of the Mandelbrot set centered around is sometimes known as the sea
horse valley because the spiral shapes appearing in it resemble sea horse tails (Giffin, Munafo).

Similarly, the portion of the Mandelbrot set centered around with size approximately
is known as elephant valley.

Shishikura (1994) proved that the boundary of the Mandelbrot set is a fractal with Hausdorff
dimension 2, refuting the conclusion of Elenbogen and Kaeding (1989) that it is not. However, it
is not yet known if the Mandelbrot set is pathwise-connected. If it is pathwise-connected, then
Hubbard and Douady's proof implies that the Mandelbrot set is the image of a circle and can be
constructed from a disk by collapsing certain arcs in the interior (Douady 1986).
The area of the Mandelbrot set can be written exactly as

(4)

where are the coefficients of the Laurent series about infinity of the conformal map of the
exterior of the unit disk onto the exterior of the Mandelbrot set,

(5)

(6)

(OEIS A054670 and A054671; Ewing and Schober 1992). The recursion for is given by

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)
These coefficients can be computed recursively, but a closed form is not known. Furthermore,
the sum converges very slowly, so terms are needed to get the first two digits, and
terms are needed to get three digits. Ewing and Schober (1992) computed the first values
of , found that in this range, and conjectured that this inequality always holds.
This calculation also provided the limit and led the authors to believe that the true
values lies between and .

The area of the set obtained by pixel counting is (OEIS A098403;

Munafo; Lesmoir-Gordon et al. 2000, p. 97) and by statistical sampling is
with 95% confidence (Mitchell 2001), both of which are significantly smaller than the estimate
of Ewing and Schober (1992).

To visualize the Mandelbrot set, the limit at which points are assumed to have escaped can be
approximated by instead of infinity. Beautiful computer-generated plots can be then be
created by coloring nonmember points depending on how quickly they diverge to .A
common choice is to define an integer called the count to be the largest such that ,
where can be conveniently taken as , and to color points of different count different
colors. The boundary between successive counts defines a series of "Mandelbrot set lemniscates"
(or "equipotential curves"; Peitgen and Saupe 1988) defined by iterating the quadratic
recurrence,

(11)

The first few lemniscates are therefore given by

 (12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
(17)
(18)

(OEIS A114448).

When writing and taking the absolute square of each side, the lemniscates can plotted
in the complex plane, and the first few are given by

(19
)
(20
)
(21
)

These are a circle (black), an oval (red), and a pear curve (yellow). In fact, the second
Mandelbrot set lemniscate can be written in terms of a new coordinate system with
as

(22)

which is just a Cassini oval with and . The Mandelbrot set lemniscates grow
increasingly convoluted with higher count, illustrated above, and approach the Mandelbrot set as
the count tends to infinity.
The term Mandelbrot set can also be applied to generalizations of "the" Mandelbrot set in which
the function is replaced by some other function. In the above plot, ,
, and is allowed to vary in the complex plane. Note that completely different sets (that are
not Mandelbrot sets) can be obtained for choices of that do not lie in the fractal attractor. So,
for example, in the above set, picking inside the unit disk but outside the red basins gives a set
of completely different-looking images.
Generalizations of the Mandelbrot set can be constructed by replacing with or , where
is a positive integer and denotes the complex conjugate of . The above figures show the
fractals obtained for , 3, and 4 (Dickau). The plots on the bottom have replaced with and
are sometimes called "mandelbar sets."

SEE ALSO: Cactus Fractal, Elephant Valley, Fractal, Julia Set, Mandelbar Set, Mandelbrot Set
Lemniscate, Quadratic Map, Randelbrot Set, Sea Horse Valley
REFERENCES:

Alfeld, P. "The Mandelbrot Set."

http://www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/math/mandelbrot/mandelbrot.html.

Bowen, J. P. "Virtual Museum of Computing Mandelbrot Exhibition."

http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/other/museums/computing/mandelbrot.html.

Branner, B. "The Mandelbrot Set." In Chaos and Fractals: The Mathematics Behind the
Computer Graphics, Proc. Sympos. Appl. Math., Vol. 39 (Ed. R. L. Devaney and L. Keen).
Providence, RI: Amer. Math. Soc., 75-105, 1989.

Devaney, R. "The Mandelbrot Set and the Farey Tree, and the Fibonacci Sequence." Amer.
Math. Monthly 106, 289-302, 1999.

Dickau, R. M. "Mandelbrot (and Similar) Sets."

http://mathforum.org/advanced/robertd/mandelbrot.html.

Douady, A. "Julia Sets and the Mandelbrot Set." In The Beauty of Fractals: Images of Complex
Dynamical Systems (Ed. H.-O. Peitgen and D. H. Richter). Berlin: Springer-Verlag, p. 161, 1986.

Elenbogen, B. and Kaeding, T. "A Weak Estimate of the Fractal Dimension of the Mandelbrot
Boundary." Phys. Lett. A 136, 358-362, 1989.

Eppstein, D. "Area of the Mandelbrot Set." http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/mand-

area.html.

Ewing, J. H. and Schober, G. "The Area of the Mandelbrot Set." Numer. Math. 61, 59-72, 1992.

Fisher, Y. and Hill, J. "Bounding the Area of the Mandelbrot Set." Submitted to Numer. Math.

Giffin, N. "The 'Main Seahorse Valley Series' from Bengt Månsson."

http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/bm/shv1/shv1.html.

Gleick, J. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Penguin Books, center plate (following
p. 114), 1988.

Hill, J. R. "Fractals and the Grand Internet Parallel Processing Project." Ch. 15 in Fractal
Horizons: The Future Use of Fractals. New York: St. Martin's Press, pp. 299-323, 1996.
Lauwerier, H. Fractals: Endlessly Repeated Geometric Figures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, pp. 148-151 and 179-180, 1991.

Lei, T. (Ed.). The Mandelbrot Set, Theme and Variations. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 2000.

Lesmoir-Gordon, N.; Rood, W.; and Edney, R. Introducing Fractal Geometry. Cambridge,
England: Icon Books, p. 97, 2000.

Mandelbrot, B. B. The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. 188-189,
1983.

Mitchell, K. "A Statistical Investigation of the Area of the Mandelbrot Set." 2001.
http://www.fractalus.com/kerry/articles/area/mandelbrot-area.html.

Munafo, R. "Mu-Ency--The Encyclopedia of the Mandelbrot Set."

http://www.mrob.com/pub/muency.html.

Munafo, R. "Area of the Mandelbrot Set."

http://www.mrob.com/pub/muency/areaofthemandelbrotset.html.

Munafo, R. "Pixel Counting." http://www.mrob.com/pub/muency/pixelcounting.html.

Peitgen, H.-O. and Saupe, D. (Eds.). The Science of Fractal Images. New York: Springer-Verlag,
pp. 178-179, 1988.

Shishikura, M. "The Boundary of the Mandelbrot Set has Hausdorff Dimension Two."
Astérisque, No. 222, 7, 389-405, 1994.

Sloane, N. J. A. Sequences A054670, A054671, A098403, and A114448 in "The On-Line

Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences."

Taylor, M. "Deep into the Seahorse Valley."

http://www.princeton.edu/~mstaylor/fractals/seahorse.htm.

Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry. London: Penguin,
pp. 146-148, 1991.

Applied Mathematics > Complex Systems > Fractals >

Recreational Mathematics > Mathematical Art > Mathematical Images >
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Julia Set
Let be a rational function

(1)

where , is the Riemann sphere , and and are polynomials without common
divisors. The "filled-in" Julia set is the set of points which do not approach infinity after
is repeatedly applied (corresponding to a strange attractor). The true Julia set is the boundary of
the filled-in set (the set of "exceptional points"). There are two types of Julia sets: connected sets
(Fatou set) and Cantor sets (Fatou dust).

Quadratic Julia sets are generated by the quadratic mapping

(2)

for fixed . For almost every , this transformation generates a fractal. Examples are shown
above for various values of . The resulting object is not a fractal for (Dufner et al. 1998,
pp. 224-226) and (Dufner et al. 1998, pp. 125-126), although it does not seem to be known
if these two are the only such exceptional values.
The special case of on the boundary of the Mandelbrot set is called a dendrite fractal (top
left figure), is called Douady's rabbit fractal (top right figure), is
called the San Marco fractal (bottom left figure), and is the Siegel disk fractal
(bottom right figure).

The equation for the quadratic Julia set is a conformal mapping, so angles are preserved. Let be
the Julia set, then leaves invariant. If a point is on , then all its iterations are on . The
transformation has a two-valued inverse. If and is started at 0, then the map is equivalent
to the logistic map. The set of all points for which is connected is known as the Mandelbrot set.

For a Julia set with , the capacity dimension is

(3)

For small , is also a Jordan curve, although its points are not computable.

SEE ALSO: Dendrite Fractal, Douady's Rabbit Fractal, Fatou Dust, Fatou Set, Fractal,
Mandelbrot Set, Newton's Method, San Marco Fractal, Siegel Disk Fractal, Strange Attractor
REFERENCES:

Dickau, R. M. "Julia Sets." http://mathforum.org/advanced/robertd/julias.html.

Dickau, R. M. "Another Method for Calculating Julia Sets."

http://mathforum.org/advanced/robertd/inversejulia.html.
Douady, A. "Julia Sets and the Mandelbrot Set." In The Beauty of Fractals: Images of Complex
Dynamical Systems (Ed. H.-O. Peitgen and D. H. Richter). Berlin: Springer-Verlag, p. 161, 1986.

Dufner, J.; Roser, A.; and Unseld, F. Fraktale und Julia-Mengen. Harri Deutsch, 1998.

Lauwerier, H. Fractals: Endlessly Repeated Geometric Figures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, pp. 124-126, 138-148, and 177-179, 1991.

Mendes-France, M. "Nevertheless." Math. Intell. 10, 35, 1988.

Peitgen, H.-O. and Saupe, D. (Eds.). "The Julia Set," "Julia Sets as Basin Boundaries," "Other
Julia Sets," and "Exploring Julia Sets." §3.3.2 to 3.3.5 in The Science of Fractal Images. New
York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 152-163, 1988.

Schroeder, M. Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws. New York: W. H. Freeman, p. 39, 1991.

Wagon, S. "Julia Sets." §5.4 in Mathematica in Action. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. 163-178,
1991.

Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry. London: Penguin,
pp. 126-127, 1991.