English

Topological Prevalence of Finite Type Interval Translation Maps

Dynamical Systems 2026-05-06 v2

Abstract

An interval translation map (ITM) is a map T ⁣:IIT \colon I \to I defined as a piecewise translation on a finite partition of an interval II into r2r \ge 2 subintervals. Unlike classical interval exchange transformations (IETs), the images of these subintervals are allowed to overlap, making ITMs a natural generalisation of IETs. An ITM TT is said to be \textit{of finite type} if its attractor n0Tn(I)\bigcap_{n\ge 0} T^n(I) is a finite union of intervals; in this case, restricted to this invariant set, TT is bijective and hence behaves like an IET. Otherwise, TT is of infinite type. In this paper, for every r2r \ge 2, we prove that the set of finite type ITMs contains an open and dense subset in the space of all possible ITMs on rr subintervals. This confirms a topological version of a long-standing conjecture due to Boshernitzan and Kornfeld.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.00186,
  title  = {Topological Prevalence of Finite Type Interval Translation Maps},
  author = {Kostiantyn Drach and Leon Staresinic and Sebastian van Strien},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.00186},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

The content of this paper is largely a part of an earlier manuscript arXiv:2411.14312. That manuscript has been split into a three-part series: arXiv:2605.00173, arXiv:2605.00190, and arXiv:2605.00186