New integrable cases of a Cremona transformation: a finite-order orbits analysis

We analyse the properties of a particular birational mapping of two variables (Cremona transformation) depending on two free parameters ( and ), associated with the action of a discrete group of non-linear (birational) transformations on the entries of a q × q matrix. This mapping originates from the analysis of birational transformations obtained from very simple algebraic calculations, namely taking the inverse of q × q matrices and permuting some of the entries of these matrices. It has been seen to yield weak chaos and integrability. We have found new integrable cases of this Cremona transformation, corresponding to the values of = 0 when , besides the already known values = 0 and = −1, and also arbitrary when = 0. For these cases, one has a foliation of the parameter space in elliptic curves. We give the equations of these elliptic curves. Based on this very example we show how one can find these integrability cases of the Cremona transformation and actually integrate it using a method based on the systematic study of the finite-order conditions of the Cremona transformation. The method is shown to be efficient and straightforward. The various integrability cases are revisited using many different representations of this very mapping (birational transformations, recursion in one variable, …).     

Factorization properties of birational mappings

We analyse birational mappings generated by transformations on q × q matrices which correspond respectively to two kinds of transformations: the matrix inversion and a permutation of the entries of the q × q matrix. Remarkable factorization properties emerge for quite general involutive permutations.

It is shown that factorization properties do exist, even for birational transformations associated with noninvolutive permutations of entries of q × q matrices, and even for more general transformation which are rational transformations but no longer birational. The existence of factorization relations independent of q, the size of the matrices, is underlined.

The relations between the polynomial growth of the complexity of the iterations, the existence of recursions in a single variable and the integrability of the mappings, are sketched for the permutations yielding these properties.

All these results show that permutations of the entries of the matrix yielding factorization properties are not so rare. In contrast, the occurrence of recursions in a single variable, or of the polynomial growth of the complexity are, of course, less frequent but not completely exceptional.