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PREPRINTS IN THIS SERIES, IN PDF FORMAT.
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Consider the group $Ham^c(M)$ of compactly supported Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of the symplectic manifold $(M,\omega)$ with the Hofer $L^{\infty}$-norm. A path in $Ham^c(M)$ will be called a geodesic if all sufficiently short pieces of it are local minima for the Hofer length functional $\mathcal{L}$. In this paper, we give a necessary condition for a path $\gamma$ to be a geodesic. We also develop a necessary condition for a geodesic to be stable, that is, a local minimum for $\mathcal{L}$. This condition is related to the existence of periodic orbits for the linearization of the path, and so extends Ustilovsky's work on the second variation formula. Using it, we construct a symplectomorphism of $S^2$ which cannot be reached from the identity by a shortest path. In later papers in this series, we will use holomorphic methods to prove the sufficiency of the condition given here for the characterisation of geodesics as well as the sufficiency of the condition for the stability of geodesics. We will also investigate conditions under which geodesics are absolutely length-minimizing.
It is shown that a polynomial with a Cremer periodic point has a non-accessible critical point in its Julia set provided that the Cremer periodic point is approximated by small cycles.
We discuss some properties of a class of cellular automata sometimes called a "generalized ant". This system is perhaps most easily understood by thinking of an ant which moves about a lattice in the plane. At each vertex (or "cell"), the ant turns right or left, depending on the the state of the cell, and then changes the state of the cell according to certain prescribed rule strings. (This system has been the subject of several Mathematical Entertainments columns in the Mathematical Intelligencer; this article will be a future such column). At various times, the distributions of the states of the cells for certain ants is bilaterally symmetric; we categorize a class of ants for which this is the case and give a proof using Truchet tiles.
We suggest a way to associate to a rational map of the Riemann sphere a three dimensional object called a hyperbolic orbifold 3-lamination. The relation of this object to the map is analogous to the relation of a hyperbolic 3-manifold to a Kleinian group. In order to construct the 3-lamination we analyze the natural extension of a rational map and the complex affine structure on the canonical 2-dimensional leaf space contained in it. In this paper the construction is carried out in full for post-critically finite maps. We show that the corresponding laminations have a compact convex core. As a first application we give a three-dimensional proof of Thurston's rigidity for post-critically finite mappings, via the "lamination extension" of the proofs of the Mostow and Marden rigidity and isomorphism theorems for hyperbolic 3-manifolds. An Ahlfors-type argument for zero measure of the Julia set is applied along the way. This approach also provides a new point of view on the Lattes deformable examples.
For the polynomials $p_c(z)=z^d+c$, the periodic points of periods dividing $n$ are the roots of the polynomials $P_n(z)=p_c^{\circ n}(z)-z$, where any degree $d\geq 2$ is fixed. We prove that all periodic points of any exact period $k$ are roots of the same irreducible factor of $P_n$ over $\mathbb{C}(c)$. Moreover, we calculate the Galois groups of these irreducible factors and show that they consist of all permutations of periodic points which commute with the dynamics. These results carry over to larger families of maps, including the spaces of general degree-$d$-polynomials and families of rational maps. Main tool, and second main result, is a combinatorial description of the structure of the Mandelbrot set and its degree-$d$-counterparts in terms of internal addresses of hyperbolic components. Internal addresses interpret kneading sequences of angles in a geometric way and answer Devaney's question: "How can you tell where in the Mandelbrot a given rational external ray lands, without having Adrien Douady at your side?"
In $ \mathit {Ch91a}$ it was shown that the billiard ball map for the periodic Lorentz gas has infinite topological entropy. In this article we study the set of points with infinite Lyapunov exponents. Using the cell structure developed in $ \mathit {BSC90,Ku}$ we construct an ergodic invariant probability measure with infinite topological entropy supported on this set. Since the topological entropy is infinite this is a measure of maximal entropy. From the construction it is clear that there many such measures can coexist on a single component of topological transitivity. We also construct an ergodic invariant probability measure with finite entropy which is supported on this set showing that infinite exponents do not necessarily lead to infinite entropy.
We prove that for continuous maps on the interval, the existence of an n-cycle, implies the existence of n-1 points which interwind the original ones and are permuted by the map. We then use this combinatorial result to show that piecewise affine maps (with no zero slope) cannot be infinitely renormalizable.
We consider a geometric property of the closest-points projection to a geodesic in Teichmüller space: the projection is called contracting if arbitrarily large balls away from the geodesic project to sets of bounded diameter. (This property always holds in negatively curved spaces.) It is shown here to hold if and only if the geodesic is precompact, i.e. its image in the moduli space is contained in a compact set. Some applications are given, e.g. to stability properties of certain quasi-geodesics in Teichmüller space, and to estimates of translation distance for pseudo-Anosov maps.
A polygon is called rational if the angle between each pair of sides is a rational multiple of $\pi$. The main theorem we will prove is
Theorem 1: For rational polygons, periodic points of the billiard flow are dense in the phase space of the billiard flow. This is a strengthening of Masur's theorem, who has shown that any rational polygon has "many" periodic billiard trajectories; more precisely, the set of directions of the periodic trajectories are dense in the set of velocity directions $\textbf{S}^1$.
We will also prove some refinements of Theorem 1: the "well distribution" of periodic orbits in the polygon and the residuality of the points $q \in Q$ with a dense set of periodic directions.