KNOT POINTS IN TWO-DIMENSIONAL MAPS AND RELATED PROPERTIES

Abstract

We consider the class of two-dimensional maps of the plane for which there exists a whole one-dimensional singular set (for example, a straight line) that is mapped into one point, called a "knot point" of the map. The special character of this kind of point has been already observed in maps of this class with at least one of the inverses having a vanishing denominator. In that framework, a knot is the so-called focal point of the inverse map (it is the same point). In this paper, we show that knots may also exist in other families of maps, not related to an inverse having values going to infinity. Some particular properties related to focal points persist, such as the existence of a "point to slope" correspondence between the points of the singular line and the slopes in the knot, lobes issuing from the knot point and loops in infinitely many points of an attracting set or in invariant stable and unstable sets.