A symmetry of sphere map implies its chaos (Q2576717)

Let \(M\) be a compact smooth manifold and let \(f^k : M \to M\) denote the \(k\)-th iterate of a selfmap. \textit{M. Shub} and \textit{D. Sullivan} [Topology 13, 189--191 (1974; Zbl 0291.58014)] proved that if \(f\) is a smooth map and the sequence \(\{L(f^k)\}\) of Lefschetz numbers is unbounded, then \(f\) is ``chaotic'' in the sense that it has infinitely many periodic points. They also exhibited a non-smooth self-map \(f\) of the sphere \(S^2\) with \(\{L(f^k)\}\) unbounded yet \(f\) has only two periodic points. Suppose \(g : S^n \to S^n\) is a homeomorphism such that \(g^m\) is the identity map and the action of \(\mathbb Z_m\) on \(S^n\) defined by \(g\) is free. This paper demonstrates that if a map \(f : S^n \to S^n\) is equivariant with respect to this action, then the hypothesis of \(\{L(f^k)\}\) unbounded is sufficient to imply that \(f\) has infinitely many periodic points. The result follows from a lower bound on the number of fixed points of an iterate; in particular, if \(k = m^{s + 1}\) then \(f^k\) has at least \(k + 1\) fixed points. As the authors point out, the asymptotic Nielsen number, which is a frequently-used tool for establishing that a map has infinitely many periodic points, gives no information about maps of simply-connected spaces such as spheres. However, the equivariant map \(f\) induces a map \(\bar f\) on the orbit space \(M = S^n/\mathbb Z_m\) and they are able to use Nielsen theory to study the iterates of \(\bar f\) and then apply those calculations to the iterates of \(f\). They conjecture that if \(X\) is a closed manifold on which a finite group acts freely and \(f : X \to X\) is a map that is equivariant with respect to the action, then it is still true that \(\{L(f^k)\}\) unbounded implies that \(f\) has infinitely many periodic points.