Structure of groups of circle diffeomorphisms with the property of fixing nonexpandable points (Q366079)

Let \(G\) be a subgroup of \(\text{Diff}^2(S^1)\). A point \(x \in S^1\) is said to be ``nonexpandable for the action of \(G\)'' if \(|g'(x)|\leq 1,\) for every \(g \in G\). Let \(G\) be a finitely generated subgroup of \(\text{Diff}^2(S^1),\) then \(G\) is said to have the property (*) if its action is minimal and, for every nonexpandable point \(x,\) there exist \(g_+\) and \(g_- \in G\) such that \(g_+(x)=g_-(x)=x\), and \(x\) is a right (left) isolated point of Fix(\(g_+\)) (respectively, of Fix(\(g_-\))). Groups with the property (*) and with a nonempty set of nonexpandable points are studied in this paper, these groups are referred to as \(N\)-groups. We now state the two main theorems of the paper. Theorem 1. Let \(G\) be a finitely generated \(N\)-group of \(C^2\) circle diffeomorphisms. Then there exists a partition of the circle into intervals \(\{I_1, \dots , I_k, I_1^+,I_1^-, \dots , I_l^+,I_l^-\}=\mathcal{I}\) and maps \[ g_1, \dots , g_k, g_1^+,g_1^-, \dots , g_l^+,g_l^- \, \in \, G \] associated with these intervals such that {\parindent=8mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] all the images \(g_i^{\pm} (I_i^{\pm})\) and \(g_j(I_j)\) are unions of elements of \(\mathcal{I}\); \item[(ii)] there exists a \(\lambda_0>1\) such that \(g'_j(x)\geq \lambda_0\) for any \(j\) and any \(x \in I_j\); \item[(iii)] the intervals \(I_i^+\) and \(I_i^-\) are adjacent on the right and on the left, respectively, to a nonexpandable point \(x_i^*\); moreover, the point \(x_i^*\) is a fixed topologically repelling point for the restriction of the map \(g_i^+\) (\(g_i^-\)) to the interval \(I_i^+\) (respectively, \(I_i^-\)) and there is no other fixed point on this interval; in addition, \(g_i^{\pm}(I_i^{\pm})\setminus I_i^{\pm} \subset \bigcup_j I_j\); \item[(iv)] for any \(i\) and \(x \in I^{\pm}_i\), one has \((g_{j(x)} \circ (g_i^{\pm})^{k_i^{\pm}(x)})'(x) \geq 2,\) where \(k_i^{\pm}(x)=\min\{k \in \mathbb{N}| (g_i^{\pm})^k(x) \notin I_i^{\pm}\}\) and \(j(x)\) is defined by the condition \((g_i^{\pm})^{k_i^{\pm}(x)}(x) \in I_{j(x)}.\) \end{itemize}} This theorem states the existence of Markov partitions for finitely generated \(N\)-groups of \(C^2\) diffeomorphisms. Then by choosing one such partition of the circle into interval maps together with the associated maps \(\{(I, g_I): I \in \mathcal{I}\}\) (as in Theorem 1), the authors define an expansion procedure consisting of a finite sequence of intervals associated with an interval \(J\) in \(S^1\) and constructed as follows: \(J^{(0)}=J\); \(J^{(n)}=g_{I_{(n)}}(J^{(n-1)})\) if \(J^{(n-1)} \subset I_{(n)} \in \mathcal{I}\); if there is no such \(I_{(n)}\), then the sequence ends with \(J^{(n-1)}\) (cf. Definition 3). The maps \(G_{n,J}= g_{I_{(n)}} \circ \dots \circ g_{I_{(1)}}\) are called the ``expanding compositions'' for the interval \(J\). Theorem 2 (structure theorem). Let \(G\) be a group as in Theorem 1. Chose and fix intervals \((I_j, g_j)\) and \((I_j^{\pm}, g_j^{\pm})\) as in Theorem 1. Then there exist a finite number of intervals \[ L_1, \dots , L_N, L_1', \dots , L_N' \] and maps \(h_i : L_i \rightarrow L_i'\) such that any map \(g \in G\) admits the following representation: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[-] there are two partitions of the circle into intervals depending on \(g\): \[ S^1=J_1 \cup \dots \cup J_m = g(J_1) \cup \dots \cup g(J_m); \] \item[-] for any \(p=1, \dots , m\), the expansion sequence of the interval \(J_p\) contains an interval \(L_{i_p}\), and the expansion sequence of \(g(J_p)\) contains the corresponding interval \(L_{i_p}'\); in other words, for some \(n\) and \(n'\), \[ G_{n, J_p}(J_p)=L_{i_p}, \,\,\, G_{n', g(J_p)}(g(J_p))=L_{i_p}'; \] \item[-] the map \(g\), at a magnification enough high, is precisely the corresponding map \(h_{i_p}\): \[ g|_{J_p}=G^{-1}_{n',g(J_p)} \circ h_{i_p}\circ G_{n, J_p}. \] Moreover, the partition \(S^1= \bigcup J_i\) can be chosen to be the same for any finite set of maps in \(G\). \end{itemize}} The authors also state two more results on Lyapunov exponents whose proofs are published in another paper. Section 2 is dedicated to the proof of Theorem 1. Section 3 deals with distortion techniques, including a definition of distortion coefficient of a \(C^2\) diffeomorphism, distortion norm, energy of a point in \(S^1\), and also several interesting results with respective proofs. Section 4 is dedicated to the proof of Theorem 2 with several auxiliary results. Section 5 is very short and gives the proof for the following corollary. Corollary. Any \(G\)-orbit is the union of at most \(N\) \(\mathcal{R}\)-equivalence classes. The equivalence relation \(\mathcal{R}\) is defined by \(x \mathcal{R} (R(x))\) when \(R(x)=g_I(x)\), \(x \in I.\)