What you need to know to knead (Q914219)

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to kneading theory which is a powerful tool for analyzing the iterates of piecewise monotone mappings on an interval. On the first 10 pages a short outline of the most important results is given, whereas on the next 50 pages the detailed theory is presented. The first part deals with the combinatorics of kneading theory (in the sense of establishing identities in the ring of formal power series over \({\mathbb{Z}})\). This is done in sections 2-5 (the main kneading identity / Milnor and Thurston's definition / an identity for the kneading determinant / the inverse of the kneading matrix). In the second part the elements of this ring are considered as power series in the complex variable t. Then the identities become equations for meromorphic functions in the unit disc (section 6). The third part deals with some interesting applications of the theory: piecewise linear models, counting fixed points, computation of the total variation, construction of an invariant measure with maximal entropy (sections 7- 11). In the apendix an extension of kneading theory to functions with discontinuities at their turning points is given. The theory presented in these notes covers a lot of the material of \textit{J. Milnor} and \textit{W. Thurston}'s paper [Lect. Notes Math. 1342, 465-583 (1988; Zbl 0664.58015)]. However the author's treatment has a strong combinatorial bias.