Renormalization conjecture and rigidity theory for circle diffeomorphisms with breaks (Q484475)

The authors consider renormalizations of \(C^{2+\alpha}\)-smooth circle diffeomorphisms with breaks (\(\alpha >0\)); these are homeomorphisms \(T: \mathbb{T}^1 \rightarrow \mathbb{T}^1\) for which there exists a point \(x_{br} \in \mathbb{T}^1\) such that: (i) \(T\) is \(C^{2+\alpha}\)-smooth on \([x_{br}, x_{br}+1]\); (ii) \(\inf_{x \neq x_{br}} T'(x) >0\); and (iii) there exist one-sided derivatives \(T'_{-} (x_{br})\neq T'_{+} (x_{br}).\) The point \(x_{br}\) is refered to as the break point and \[ c=\sqrt{\frac{T'_{-} (x_{br})}{T'_{+} (x_{br})}}\neq 1, \] the break size. This paper concerns the renormalization and rigidity theory for circle diffeomorphisms with a single singular point where the derivative has a discontinuity jump. The authors prove the renormalization conjecture for circle diffeomorphisms with breaks. The renormalizations of any two \(C^{2+\alpha}\)-smooth (\(\alpha \in (0,1)\)) circle diffeomorphisms with a break point, with the same irrational rotation number and the same break size, approach each other exponentially fast. More precisely, the authors prove the following main theorem. {Theorem 1.1 } Let \(\alpha \in (0,1)\) and \(c \in \mathbb{R}^+\setminus \{1\}\). There exists \(\mu \in (0,1)\), such that for every two \(C^{2+\alpha}\)-smooth circle diffeomorphisms with a break \(T\) and \(\tilde{T}\), with the same irrational rotation number \(\rho \in (0,1)\) and the same size of the break \(c\), there exists \(C>0\) such that the renormalizations \(f_n\) and \(\tilde {f}_n\) of \(T\) and \(\tilde{T}\), respectively, satisfy \(\|f_n -\tilde{f}_n\|_{C^2} \leq C\mu^n\), for all \(n \in \mathbb{N}\). The paper is organized in seven sections. The introduction gives a very thorough description of the main results and a summary of the essential ideas addressed in the paper. Definitions and basic results are presented in Section 2. In Section 3, the authors prove several estimates of the renormalization parameters including the parameter \(a_n\), which is the ratio of the lengths of two successive renormalization segments. In Section 4, they define the strings of renormalizations with large \(a_n\) tails and they obtain several results on the closeness of renormalizations in the tail to fractional linear maps with the same rotation number. In Section 5, it is shown that renormalizations with small parameters \(a_n\) are also close to fractional linear maps with the same rotation number. In Section 6, the authors prove an almost commuting property of the renormalization operator and define a projection operator onto the space of fractional linear transformations. In the last section, they develop a method for combining the two different mechanisms of closeness of renormalizations established in Sections 4 and 5 and prove Theorem 1.1.