Periodic points of birational transformations on projective surfaces (Q2345111)

The author considers birational maps of a smooth projective surface over an algebraically closed field, and provides a complete classification of the maps which have a Zariski-dense set of noncritical periodic points (periodic points whose orbits are disjoint from the indeterminacy set and the critical set of the map). The result takes the form of a tricotomy, determined by the value of the so-called first dynamical degree of the map, and by the growth of the degree of the iterates of the map. It is proved for characteristic different from 2 or 3. The author then establishes the most interesting case of this tricotomy (if the first degree is greater than 1, then the noncritical periodic points are Zariski-dense) over a field of arbitrary characteristic. These results, proved by purely algebraic methods, extend a result by \textit{N. Fakhruddin} [J. Ramanujan Math. Soc. 18, No. 2, 109--122 (2003; Zbl 1053.14025)] for polarised endomorphisms of a projective variety, as well as analytic proofs for various cases of maps over the complex field.