English

Geometric differentiability of Riemann's non-differentiable function

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2020-03-05 v3 Metric Geometry

Abstract

Riemann's non-differentiable function is a classic example of a continuous function which is almost nowhere differentiable, and many results concerning its analytic regularity have been shown so far. However, it can also be given a geometric interpretation, so questions on its geometric regularity arise. This point of view is developed in the context of the evolution of vortex filaments, modelled by the Vortex Filament Equation or the binormal flow, in which a generalisation of Riemann's function to the complex plane can be regarded as the trajectory of a particle. The objective of this document is to show that the trajectory represented by its image does not have a tangent anywhere. For that, we discuss several concepts of tangent vectors in view of the set's irregularity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.02536,
  title  = {Geometric differentiability of Riemann's non-differentiable function},
  author = {Daniel Eceizabarrena},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.02536},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

27 pages, 6 figures. v2: Typos corrected, references added. v3: Accepted manuscript

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:35:48.680Z