Presenting the Sierpinski Gasket in Various Categories of Metric Spaces

Jayampathy Ratnayake, Annanthakrishna Manokaran, Romaine Jayewardene, Victoria Noquez, Lawrence S. Moss

Abstract: This paper studies presentations of the Sierpinski gasket as a final coalgebra for a functor on three categories of metric spaces with additional designated points. The three categories which we study differ on their morphisms: one uses short (non-expanding) maps, the second uses continuous maps, and the third uses Lipschitz maps. The functor in all cases is very similar to what we find in the standard presentation of the gasket as an attractor. It was previously known that the Sierpinski gasket is bilipschitz equivalent (though not isomorhpic) to the final coalgebra of this functor in the category with short maps, and that final coalgebra is obtained by taking the completion of the initial algebra. In this paper, we prove that the Sierpiniski gasket itself is the final coalgebra in the category with continuous maps, though it does not occur as the completion of the initial algebra. In the Lipschitz setting, we show that the final coalgebra for this functor does not exist.