The Entropy of an Overlapping Dynamical System

Abstract

The term "overlapping" refers to a certain fairly simple type of piecewise continuous function from the unit interval to itself and also to a fairly simple type of iterated function system (IFS) on the unit interval. A correspondence between these two classes of objects is used (1) to find a necessary and sufficient condition for a fractal transformation from the attractor of one overlapping IFS to the attractor of another overlapping IFS to be a homeomorphism and (2) to find a formula for the topological entropy of the dynamical system associated with an overlapping function.