A note on periodic points and commuting functions (Q5932450): Difference between revisions

\textit{Alikhani-Koopaei} has conjectured that two commuting continuous functions will typically have disjoint sets of periodic points. In the paper, a possible solution to this conjecture is discussed. Let \(C(I,I)\) denote the space of continuous functions mapping the unit interval \(I=[0,1]\) into itself equipped with the sup norm, and let \(P(f)\) denote the set of all periodic points of a function \(f\). Using the Baire Category Theorem, the following two results are proved: (1) There exists a residual set \(S\subset C(I,I)\) such that for any \(f\in S\), \(P(f)\) is a first category set. Moreover, for each \(f\in S\) there exists a residual set \(L(f)\subset C(I,I)\) such that for any \(g\in L(f)\), \(P(f)\cap P(g)=\emptyset \) and \(P(g)\) is of the first category. (2) If \(f\in C(I,I)\) is not the identity function, then the set \({\mathcal F}=\{g\in C(I,I):gf=fg\}\) is closed and nowhere dense in \(C(I,I)\). In the final part of the paper, iterative properties possessed by commuting pairs of continuous functions are investigated.