Growth of periodic points and rotation vectors on surfaces (Q676975)

The authors consider a diffeomorphism \(f:M\to M\) of a compact surface \(M\), isotopic to the identity map, and study the growth of their periodic points by considering the rotation set \(\rho_x(f)\subset H^1(M,R)\) associated to a point \(x\) of \(M\) (which can be heuristically interpreted as describing the ``asymptotic drift'' in homology of the orbit of \(x\)). The following condition is introduced by Hayakawa. Condition (*): Let \(b\) be the first Betti number of \(M\). There exist \(b+1\) periodic points \(f^{n_i}(x_i)=x_i, i+1,...,b+1\) such that the convex hull \(\text{co} \{\rho_{x_1}(f), ... , \rho_{x_{b+1}}(f)\}\) has non-empty interior. There exists an additional point \(z\) which is a fixed point under \(f^m\) with non-zero index and such that \(\rho_{z}(f)\in \text{co}\{\rho_{x_1}(f), ... , \rho_{x_{b+1}}(f)\}\). In the article under review the authors generalize the Hayakawa result. Their main result is the following. Let \(M\) be a compact surface (possibly with boundary) of genus at least 2. Suppose that \(f: M\to M\) is a diffeomorphism which is isotopic to the identity map and which satisfies {Condition (*)}. Then for any vector \(\xi\in \text{int}(\text{co}\{\rho_{x_1}(f), ... , \rho_{x_{b+1}}(f)\})\cap H_1(M,Q)\) there exists \(d\geq 1\) such that \[ {\lim_{n\to +\infty}\inf}{1\over dn}\log \text{Card} \{f^{dn}(x)=x: \rho_x(f)=\xi\} >0. \] In particular, there exists a periodic point \(x\) with \(\rho_x(f)=\xi\).