Highly Non-contractive Iterated Function Systems on Euclidean Space Can Have an Attractor

Iterated function systems (IFSs) and their attractors have been central to the theory of fractal geometry almost from its inception. Moreover, contractivity of the functions in the IFS has been central to the theory of iterated functions systems. If the functions in the IFS are contractions, then the IFS is guaranteed to have a unique attractor. The converse question, does the existence of an attractor imply that the IFS is contractive, originates in a 1959 work by Bessaga which proves a converse to the contraction mapping theorem. Although a converse is true in that case, it is known that it does not always hold for an IFS. In general, there do exist IFSs with attractors and which are not contractive. However, in the context of IFSs in Euclidean space, this question has been open. In this paper we show that a highly non-contractive iterated function system in Euclidean space can have an attractor. In order to do that, we introduce the concept of an L-expansive map, i.e., a map that has Lipschitz constant strictly greater than one under any remetrization. This is necessitated by the absence of positively expansive maps on the interval.