A curious dynamical system in the plane
Dynamical Systems
2024-11-14 v2
Abstract
For any irrational and any initial value , we define a sequence of complex numbers as follows: is or , whichever has the smaller absolute value. If both numbers have the same absolute value, the sequence terminates at but this happens rarely. This dynamical system has astonishingly intricate behavior: the choice of signs in appears to eventually become periodic (though the period can be large). We prove that if one observes periodic signs for a sufficiently long time (depending on ), the signs remain periodic for all time. The surprising complexity of the system is illustrated through examples.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2409.08961,
title = {A curious dynamical system in the plane},
author = {Stefan Steinerberger and Tony Zeng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.08961},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
19 pages, 9 figures