Renormalization of almost commuting pairs (Q2187255)

According to the authors this work was motivated by the study of attractors arising from two-dimensional perturbations of critical circle maps. A critical circle map is a \(C^3\)-smooth orientation-preserving homeomorphism of the circle that has a single critical point whose order \(n\) is an odd integer. A generic analytic homeomorphism of the circle that lies on the boundary of the set of analytical diffeomorphisms is a critical circle map. A question had been raised whether, when considering small perturbations of critical surface maps, there existed topological circles on which the dynamics is topologically but not smoothly conjugate to an irrational rotation. The authors prove that critical circles of this kind exist for typical families. They explain how these critical phenomena occur in terms of the hyperbolicity of renormalization. The usual classical definition of renormalization for critical circle maps refers to commuting pairs. However, the authors could not use analytic commuting pairs in their problem since the space of analytic commuting pairs is not naturally a Banach manifold. They got around this difficulty by using an invention of the second author, the concept of cylinder renormalization. The cylinder renormalization operator is analytic and it acts on a Banach manifold of analytic maps of the circle with a domain of analyticity that includes a fixed annulus. In the course of this paper the authors provide a new proof of renormalization hyperbolicity for the case of standard commuting pairs. This provides the means to apply renormalization to small two-dimensional perturbations of critical circle maps. They find an appropriate smooth extension of renormalization to dissipative maps of the annulus in two dimensions and are able to prove renormalization hyperbolicity for these maps. The authors then apply their renormalization results to dissipative attractors of small perturbations of critical circle maps.