Symbolic representation for a class of unimodal cycles (Q1612177)

A \textit{least period} of a continuous function \(f\colon{\mathbb R}\to {\mathbb R}\) is a natural number \(n\) for which \(f^n(x)=x\) and \(f^i(x)\neq x\) for some \(x\in{\mathbb R}\) and all \(i=1,2,\ldots,n-1\). The starting point of the present investigation is a famous result by Sharkovskij describing all possible sets of least periods for continuous functions \(f\) as above as tails of the order \(3\prec 5\prec 7\prec \ldots \prec 2\cdot 3\prec 2\cdot 5\prec\ldots 2^2\cdot 3\prec 2^2\prec 5 \prec\ldots \prec 2^3\prec 2^2\prec 2\prec 1\). The article under review studies the structure of the collection of cycles determined by periodic points of maps as above. Such a cycle \(\theta\colon \{1,2,\ldots,m\}\to \{1,2,\ldots,m\}\) is called \textit{unimodal} if the corresponding piecewise linear extension \(L_\theta\colon [1,n]\to [1,n]\) has exactly one turning point. One says that a cycle \(\theta\) \textit{forces} a cycle \(\eta\) if the latter occurs as a type of some periodic point of a continuous function \(f\) whenever the former does. The restriction of this order to the set of unimodal cycles happens to be total [\textit{P. Collet} and \textit{J.-P. Eckmann}, Iterated Maps on the Interval as Dynamical Systems, Birkhäuser, Basel (1980; Zbl 0458.58002)]. The main result of the present paper describes a concrete non-trivial cut in the linearly ordered set of unimodal classes using methods of symbolic dynamics.