Entropy Monotonicity and Superstable Cycles for the Quadratic Family Revisited

The main result of this paper is a proof using real analysis of the monotonicity of the topological entropy for the family of quadratic maps, sometimes called Milnor’s Monotonicity Conjecture. In contrast, the existing proofs rely in one way or another on complex analysis. Our proof is based on tools and algorithms previously developed by the authors and collaborators to compute the topological entropy of multimodal maps. Specifically, we use the number of transverse intersections of the map iterations with the so-called critical line. The approach is technically simple and geometrical. The same approach is also used to briefly revisit the superstable cycles of the quadratic maps, since both topics are closely related

Equilibrium states for potentials with \sup\phi - \inf\phi < \htop(f)

In the context of smooth interval maps, we study an inducing scheme approach to prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for potentials $\phi$ with he `bounded range' condition \sup \phi - \inf \phi < \htop, first used by Hofbauer and Keller. We compare our results to Hofbauer and Keller's use of Perron-Frobenius operators. We demonstrate that this `bounded range' condition on the potential is important even if the potential is H\"older continuous. We also prove analyticity of the pressure in this context.Comment: Added Lemma 6 to deal with the disparity between leading eigenvalues and operator norms. Added extra references and corrected some typo

The thermodynamic approach to multifractal analysis

Most results in multifractal analysis are obtained using either a thermodynamic approach based on existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states or a saturation approach based on some version of the specification property. A general framework incorporating the most important multifractal spectra was introduced by Barreira and Saussol, who used the thermodynamic approach to establish the multifractal formalism in the uniformly hyperbolic setting, unifying many existing results. We extend this framework to apply to a broad class of non-uniformly hyperbolic systems, including examples with phase transitions. In the process, we compare this thermodynamic approach with the saturation approach and give a survey of many of the multifractal results in the literature.Comment: 51 pages, minor corrections, added formal statements of new results to "applications" sectio

Equilibrium states, pressure and escape for multimodal maps with holes

For a class of non-uniformly hyperbolic interval maps, we study rates of escape with respect to conformal measures associated with a family of geometric potentials. We establish the existence of physically relevant conditionally invariant measures and equilibrium states and prove a relation between the rate of escape and pressure with respect to these potentials. As a consequence, we obtain a Bowen formula: we express the Hausdorff dimension of the set of points which never exit through the hole in terms of the relevant pressure function. Finally, we obtain an expression for the derivative of the escape rate in the zero-hole limit.Comment: Minor edits. To appear in Israel J. Mat

Monotonicity of entropy for real multimodal maps

In \cite{Mil}, Milnor posed the {\em Monotonicity Conjecture} that the set of parameters within a family of real multimodal polynomial interval maps, for which the topological entropy is constant, is connected. This conjecture was proved for quadratic by Milnor & Thurston \cite{MT} and for cubic maps by Milnor & Tresser, see \cite{MTr} and also \cite{DGMT}. In this paper we will prove the general case.Comment: Final version. To appear in Journal of the AM