Siegel disc


Siegel disc is a connected component in the Fatou set where the dynamics is analytically conjugate to an irrational rotation.

Description

Given a holomorphic endomorphism on a Riemann surface we consider the dynamical system generated by the iterates of denoted by. We then call the orbit of as the set of forward iterates of. We are interested in the asymptotic behavior of the orbits in , and we call the phase plane or dynamical plane.
One possible asymptotic behavior for a point is to be a fixed point, or in general a periodic point. In this last case where is the period and means is a fixed point. We can then define the multiplier of the orbit as and this enables us to classify periodic orbits as attracting if superattracting if ), repelling if and indifferent if. Indifferent periodic orbits can be either rationally indifferent or irrationally indifferent, depending on whether for some or for all, respectively.
Siegel discs are one of the possible cases of connected components in the Fatou set, according to Classification of Fatou components, and can occur around irrationally indifferent periodic points. The Fatou set is, roughly, the set of points where the iterates behave similarly to their neighbours. Siegel discs correspond to points where the dynamics of is analytically
conjugate to an irrational rotation of the complex disc.

Name

The disk is named in honor of Carl Ludwig Siegel.

Gallery

Formal definition

Let be a holomorphic endomorphism where is a Riemann surface, and let U be a connected component of the Fatou set. We say U is a Siegel disc of f around the point if there exists a biholomorphism where is the unit disc and such that for some and.
Siegel's theorem proves the existence of Siegel discs for irrational numbers satisfying a strong irrationality condition, thus solving an open problem since Fatou conjectured his theorem on the Classification of Fatou components.
Later Alexander D. Brjuno improved this condition on the irrationality, enlarging it to the Brjuno numbers.
This is part of the result from the Classification of Fatou components.