Decay of geometry for unimodal maps: Negative Schwarzian case (Q2387150)

The main result of the paper deals with \(C^3\) unimodal maps of the interval with negative Schwarzian derivative whose critical point is quadratic. It is shown that if such a map is not renormalizable and the orbit of the critical point is recurrent, then there is a neighborhood \(Y'\) of the critical point such the orbit of \(\partial Y'\) never returns to \(Y'\) and such that the domain \(Y\) of the branch of the first return map to \(Y'\) that contains the critical point is small compared to the distance from \(Y\) to the complement of \(Y'\). Moreover, the estimates involved in this construction are locally uniform. An inductive argument applies in the finitely renormalizable case, leading to a similar result. One consequence of this result is that such a map induces hyperbolicity. The proof relies on the construction of asymptotically holomorphic extensions of the interval map to a neighborhood of it in the complex plane.