Constant slope, entropy, and horseshoes for a map on a tame graph

Abstract

We study continuous countably (strictly) monotone maps defined on a tame graph, i.e. a special Peano continuum for which the set containing branch points and end points has countable closure. In our investigation we confine ourselves to the countable Markov case. We show a necessary and sufficient condition under which a locally eventually onto, countably Markov map $f$ of a tame graph $G$ is conjugate to a map $g$ of constant slope. In particular, we show that in the case of a Markov map $f$ that corresponds to a recurrent transition matrix, the condition is satisfied for a constant slope $e^{h_{\text{top}}(f)}$, where $h_{\text{top}}(f)$ is the topological entropy of $f$. Moreover, we show that in our class the topological entropy $h_{\text{top}}(f)$ is achievable through horseshoes of the map $f$.