Looping Network Meetings

#71 June 16, 2025

Monday 15:00 (Paris/Warsaw time)

Vaughan Voller (University of Minnesota)

“Sketching” distributary bifurcation networks

Abstract:
Many of us have sketched out, on a board or paper, a schematic of a bifurcation network (see attached Figure). In this talk I will consider three basic geometric “rules” for constructing such a network sketch. The specification of an opening angle to constrain the domain in which the network builds, a power law decrease in spacing between the levels in the network, and a uniform distribution of the bifurcation points at each level. From these rules, using purely geometric constructs, I will show that (i) the only viable decrease in spacing between levels is a halving, resulting in (ii) the emergence of a fixed angle between bifurcations.

The question at hand is what might this geometric construction tell us about “physical networks”?

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