English

Thurston's Theorem: Entropy in Dimension One

Geometric Topology 2024-10-29 v2

Abstract

In his paper, Thurston shows that a positive real number hh is the topological entropy for an ergodic traintrack representative of an outer automorphism of a free group if and only if its expansion constant λ=eh\lambda = e^h is a weak Perron number. This is a powerful result, answering a question analogous to one regarding surfaces and stretch factors of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms. However, much of the machinery used to prove this seminal theorem on traintrack maps is contained in the part of Thurston's paper on the entropy of postcritically finite interval maps and the proof difficult to parse. In this expository paper, we modernize Thurston's approach, fill in gaps in the original paper, and distill Thurston's methods to give a cohesive proof of the traintrack theorem. Of particular note is the addition of a proof of ergodicity of the traintrack representatives, which was missing in Thurston's paper.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.15102,
  title  = {Thurston's Theorem: Entropy in Dimension One},
  author = {Ryan Dickmann and George Domat and Thomas Hill and Sanghoon Kwak and Carlos Ospina and Priyam Patel and Rebecca Rechkin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.15102},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

39 pages, 13 figures. v2: Incorporated Referee's comments. To appear in Mathematical Research Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-28T02:24:46.493Z