Skeleton is a new notion designed for constructing space-filling curves of self-similar sets. In a previous paper by Dai and the authors [6], it was shown that for all connected self-similar sets with a skeleton satisfying the open set condition, space-filling curves can be constructed. In this paper, we give a criterion of existence of skeletons by using the so-called neighbor graph of a self-similar set. In particular, we show that a connected self-similar set satisfying the finite type condition always possesses skeletons: an algorithm is obtained here.
Introduction
Space-filling curves (SFC) have attracted the attention of mathematicians over a century sincePeano's seminal work [18]. In a series of three papers, [20], [6] and the present paper, we give a systematic investigation of space-filling curves for connected self-similar sets.The notion of skeleton, which can be regarded as a kind of vertex set of a fractal, was first introduced in [7], designed for SFCs of self-affine tiles. The constructions of SFCs in [20] and [6] are based on the assumption that the self-similar set in consideration possesses a skeleton. Precisely, it is shown that Theorem 1.1 ([6]). Let K be a connected self-similar set which has a skeleton and satisfies the open set condition, then K admits space-filling curves.The goal of the present paper is to study when a self-similar set has skeletons and how to find them, which is the last part of our theory on constructing SFCs.Recall that a self-similar set is a non-empty compact set K satisfying the set equationwhere S 1 , . . . , S N are contraction similitudes on R d . The family {S 1 , . . . , S N } is called an iterated function system, or IFS in short; K is also called the invariant set of the IFS. (See for instance, [11, 9]). For the open set condition, we refer to [9, Section 9.2].