Large derivatives,backward contraction and invariant densities for interval maps

In this paper, we study the dynamics of a smooth multimodal interval map f with non-flat critical points and all periodic points hyperbolic repelling. Assuming that |Dfⁿ(f(c))|→∞ as n→∞ holds for all critical points c, we show that f satisfies the so-called backward contracting property with an arbitrarily large constant, and that f has an invariant probability μ which is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure and the density of μ belongs to L^p for all p<ℓ_max/(ℓ_max-1), where ℓ_max denotes the maximal critical order of f. In the appendix, we prove that various growth conditions on the derivatives along the critical orbits imply stronger backward contraction.