Linear fractional recurrences: periodicities and integrability (Q639727)

This article studies the question of periodicity of \(k\)-step linear fractional recurrences associated to \((k+1)\)-tuples of complex numbers \(\alpha=(\alpha_0, \dots , \alpha_k)\) and \(\beta= (\beta_0, \dots, \beta_k)\). These are recurrences where \(z_{n+k}= A(z_n, \dots , z_{n+k-1})/B(z_n, \dots, z_{n+k-1})\), where \(A\) and \(B\) are linear functions associated to \(\alpha, \beta\). The case \(k=2\) was considered by the authors in [Mich. Math. J. 54, No. 3, 647--670 (2006; Zbl 1171.37023)]. The main theorem shows the existence of \(k\) different recurrences of period \(4k\) for each \(k\). The authors associate to a \(k\)-step recurrence a birational map \(f_{\alpha, \beta}: \mathbb P^k \dashrightarrow \mathbb P^k\) and reformulate the problem in terms of the dynamical degree \(\delta(f_{\alpha, \beta})= \lim_{n \to\infty}||(f^n)*||^{1/n}\). They show that for generic \(\alpha, \beta\), the \(k\)-step recurrence is not periodic because \(\delta(f_{\alpha, \beta})>1\), and determine necessary conditions for \(f_{\alpha, \beta}\) to be periodic. An important step consists in determining a model \(Z\to \mathbb P^k\), where the degree \(\delta(f_{\alpha,\beta})\) is easy to either bound or compute. The authors then discuss the Lyness maps \(h: \mathbb P^k \dashrightarrow \mathbb P^k\); these are examples of non-periodic maps of the form as above. Using similar methods, they show that for \(k>3\) the degree of \(h^n\) is quadratic in \(n\).