Find the value of:

$i^{i^{i^{i^{i^{i^{....\infty}}}}}}$

Simply infinite powering by i's and the limiting value.

Thank you for the help.


Let us denote $x=i^{i^{i^{i^\cdots}}}$. Then we have $$i^x=x.$$ It looks like the solution is $x= \frac{2i}{\pi} W(-i\pi/2)$ with $W$ Lambert's $W$ function. Now, $W$ is multivalued. You have to figure out which of the different branches $x$ converges to (and if it converges at all). Numerically, you find (using the principal branch of the logarithm to define the exponentiation) that $x= 0.438283 + 0.360592 i$ which corresponds to the principal branch.

Knowing that you should be able to prove the result by some kind of fixed point theorem.


Here is a numerical result supporting Fabian's argument.

Here, the complex logarithm

$$ z^{w} := \exp (w \operatorname{Log} z) $$

is defined via the principal value $\mathrm{Log}$ of the logarithm, defined on $\Bbb{C} \setminus (-\infty, 0]$.

enter image description here


Another way is to take natural logarithms:

$$i^{i^{i^{i^{i^{i^{\dots \infty}}}}}}=y$$

$$\ln y= \ln (i)^y$$

$$y\ln i=\ln y$$

$$\ln i=\dfrac{i \pi}{2}$$

$$\dfrac{y.i\pi}{2}= \ln y$$

$$e^{\frac{iy\pi}{2}}=y$$


This is rather another comment than an answer but contains a picture, so...
If we display the 3-step-like trajectory separated into 3 single trajectories, we get an improvement of imagination of the convergence. See this one enter image description here

Similar improvements can be made with other bases. The idea is, to use this for convergence-acceleration procedures like Euler-sums and similar.

[Update]: Also the process of convergence can be improved over the need to iterate 100 times and more. Just use the Newton-iteration. Here is a code-snippet in Pari/GP:

f(x)  = exp( L *x)    \\ implements x->  b^x where L is the log of te base b
fd(x) = L * exp(L*x)  \\ implements the derivative of f(x)

L = log(I)
x0=0.5+0.5*I       \\ Initialize
[x0=x0 - (f(x0)-x0)/(fd(x0)-1)  , exp(L*x0)-x0]  \\ repeat this, say, 7 times

Result:

x0=0.5+0.5*I    \\ initialize
 %214 = 0.500000000000 + 0.500000000000*I

[x0=x0 - (f(x0)-x0)/(fd(x0)-1)  ,  exp( L*x0)-x0]   \\ repeat this say 7 times
 %215 = [0.429683379978 + 0.358463904092*I, 0.0149144114062 - 0.00263680525658*I]
 %216 = [0.438282449555 + 0.360624709917*I, -0.0000214307236671 - 0.0000508331490807*I]
 %217 = [0.438282936547 + 0.360592471486*I, 0.000000000547853619231 + 0.000000000479209718138*I]
 %218 = [0.438282936727 + 0.360592471871*I, 1.24483565546 E-19 - 2.36342583549 E-20*I]
 %219 = [0.438282936727 + 0.360592471871*I, -1.59860647096 E-39 - 3.49116795082 E-39*I]
 %220 = [0.438282936727 + 0.360592471871*I, 2.79037134755 E-78 + 2.15595352591 E-78*I]
 %221 = [0.438282936727 + 0.360592471871*I, 2.83277459577 E-156 - 9.05172112238 E-157*I]
 %222 = [0.438282936727 + 0.360592471871*I, 5.10320381 E-203 - 2.551601908 E-203*I]
  \\ convergence sufficient, 200 dec digits