Constructing non-computable Julia sets

While most polynomial Julia sets are computable, it has been recently shown [12] that there exist non-computable Julia sets. The proof was non-constructive, and indeed there were doubts as to whether specific examples of parameters with non-computable Julia sets could be constructed. It was also unknown whether the non-computability proof can be extended to the filled Julia sets. In this paper we give an answer to both of these questions, which were the main open problems concerning the computability of polynomial Julia sets. We show how to construct a specific polynomial with a non-computable Julia set. In fact, in the case of Julia sets of quadratic polynomials we give a precise characterization of Juliasets with computable parameters. Moreover, assuming a widely believed conjecture in Complex Dynamics, we give a poly-time algorithm forcomputing a number c such that the Julia set J z 2 +c z is non-computable. In contrast with these results, we show that the filled Julia set of a polynomial is always computable.

Authors

• Mark Braverman
• Michael Yampolsky

Keywords

• Julia sets
• computability
• dynamical systems
• real computation