Calculus on the Sierpinski Gasket I: Polynomials, Exponentials and Power Series

Jonathan Needleman, Robert S. Strichartz, Alexander Teplyaev

Published 2003-12-01Version 1

We study the analog of power series expansions on the Sierpinski gasket, for analysis based on the Kigami Laplacian. The analog of polynomials are multiharmonic functions, which have previously been studied in connection with Taylor approximations and splines. Here the main technical result is an estimate of the size of the monomials analogous to x^n/n!. We propose a definition of entire analytic functions as functions represented by power series whose coefficients satisfy exponential growth conditions that are stronger than what is required to guarantee uniform convergence. We present a characterization of these functions in terms of exponential growth conditions on powers of the Laplacian of the function. These entire analytic functions enjoy properties, such as rearrangement and unique determination by infinite jets, that one would expect. However, not all exponential functions (eigenfunctions of the Laplacian) are entire analytic, and also many other natural candidates, such as the heat kernel, do not belong to this class. Nevertheless, we are able to use spectral decimation to study exponentials, and in particular to create exponentially decaying functions for negative eigenvalues.