Yang-Baxter maps and independence preserving property

We study a surprising relationship between two properties for bijective functions $F : \mathcal{X} \times \mathcal{X} \to \mathcal{X} \times \mathcal{X}$ for a set $\mathcal{X}$ which are introduced from very different backgrounds. One of the property is that $F$ is a Yang-Baxter map, namely it satisfies the "set-theoretical" Yang-Baxter equation, and the other property is the independence preserving property (IP property for short), which means that there exist independent (non-constant) $\mathcal{X}$-valued random variables $X,Y$ such that $U,V$ are also independent with $(U,V)=F(X,Y)$. Recently in the study of invariant measures for a discrete integrable system, a class of functions having these two properties were found. Motivated by this, we analyze a relationship between the Yang-Baxter maps and the IP property, which has never been studied as far as we are aware, focusing on the case $\mathcal{X}=\mathbb{R}_+$. Our first main result is that all quadrirational Yang-Baxter maps $F : \mathbb{R}_+ \times \mathbb{R}_+ \to \mathbb{R}_+ \times \mathbb{R}_+$ in the most interesting subclass have the independence preserving property. In particular, we find new classes of bijections having the IP property. Our second main result is that these newly introduce bijections are fundamental in the class of (known) bijections with the IP property, in the sense that most of known bijections having the IP property are derived from these maps by taking special parameters or performing some limiting procedure. This reveals that the IP property, which has been investigated for specific functions individually, can be understood in a unified manner.