Rigidity of critical circle maps (Q1785963)

A critical circle map is an orientation-preserving \(C^4\) circle homeomorphism \(f\) with exactly one critical point \(c\) such that, in a neighborhood of \(c\), the map \(f\) can be written as \(f(t)=f(c)+(\phi (t))^{2d+1}\) where \(\phi\) is a \(C^4\) local diffeomorphism with \(\phi (c)=0\) and \(d \in \mathbb{N}\) with \(d\geq 1\). The criticality (also called order, type or exponent ) of the critical point \(c\) is the odd integer \(2d+1\). The critical point is also called nonflat. A \(C^4\) critical circle map \(f\) with irrational rotation number generates a sequence \(\{\mathcal{R}^n(f)\}_{n \in \mathbb{N}}\) of commuting pairs of interval maps, each such map being the renormalization of the previous one. The authors observe that a critical commuting pair is a special case of a generalized interval exchange map of two intervals and the renormalization operator is the restriction of the Zorich accelerated version of the Rauzy-Veech renormalization for interval exchange maps. The main result in the paper states that there exists a universal constant \(\lambda\), a point in the open interval \((0,\,1),\) such that given two \(C^4\) critical circle maps \(f\) and \(g\) with the same irrational rotation number and the same criticality, there exists \(C >0\) (a constant that depends on \(f\) and \(g\)) such that for all \(n \in \mathbb{N}\) we have \( d_2 (\mathcal{R}^n(f), \mathcal{R}^n(g)) \leq C \lambda^n,\) where \(d_2\) denotes the \(C^2\)-distance in the space of \(C^2\) critical commuting pairs. This theorem implies the following rigidity theorem: given two \(C^4\) circle homeomorphisms \(f\) and \(g\) with the same irrational rotation number and with a unique critical point of the same odd type. If \(h\) denotes the unique topological conjugacy between \(f\) and \(g\) that maps the critical point of \(f\) to the critical point of \(g\), then the following three statements hold: (1) \(h\) is a \(C^1\)-diffeomorphism; (2) \(h\) is a \(C^{1+\alpha}\) at the critical point of \(f\) for a universal \(\alpha >0\); and (3) for a full Lebesgue measure set of rotation numbers, \(h\) is a \(C^{1+\alpha}\)-diffeomorphism. This paper has 13 sections, an appendix and a list of references.