Dynamics of a family of piecewise-linear area-preserving plane maps II. Invariant circles

Jeffrey C. Lagarias, Eric M. Rains

Published 2003-03-01, updated 2005-07-10Version 3

This paper studies the behavior under iteration of the maps T_{ab}(x,y)=(F_{ab}(x)-y,x) of the plane R^2, in which F_{ab}(x)=ax if x>=0 and bx if x<0. The orbits under iteration correspond to solutions of the nonlinear difference equation x_{n+2}= 1/2(a-b)|x_{n+1}| + 1/2(a+b)x_{n+1} - x_n. This family of maps has the parameter space (a,b)\in R^2. These maps are area-preserving homeomorphisms of R^s that map rays from the origin into rays from the origin. This paper shows the existence of special parameter values where T_{ab} has every nonzero orbit an invariant circle with irrational rotation number, and these invariant circles are piecewise unions of arcs of conic sections. Numerical experiments suggest the possible existence of many other parameter values having invariant circles.