Regular periodic decompositions for topologicallytransitive maps

Abstract

One may often decompose the domain of a topologically transitive map into finitely many regular closed pieces with nowhere dense overlap in such a way that these pieces map into one another in a periodic fashion. We call decompositions of this kind regular periodic decompositions and refer to the number of pieces as the length of the decomposition. If $f$ is topologically transitive but $f^{n}$ is not, then $f$ has a regular periodic decomposition of some length dividing $n$. Although a decomposition of a given length is unique, a map may have many decompositions of different lengths. The set of lengths of decompositions of a given map is an ideal in the lattice of natural numbers ordered by divisibility, which we call the decomposition ideal of $f$. Every ideal in this lattice arises as a decomposition ideal of some map. Decomposition ideals of Cartesian products of transitive maps are discussed and used to develop various examples. Results are obtained concerning the implications of local connectedness for decompositions. We conclude with a comprehensive analysis of the possible decomposition ideals for maps on 1-manifolds.