Boundary of the horseshoe locus for the H\'enon family

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate geometric properties of the parameter locus of the H\'enon family where the uniform hyperbolicity of a horseshoe breaks down. As an application, we obtain a variational characterization of equilibrium measures "at temperature zero" for the corresponding non-uniformly hyperbolic H\'enon maps. The method of the proof also yields that the boundary of the hyperbolic horseshoe locus in the parameter space consists of two monotone pieces, which confirms a conjecture in [AI]. The proofs of these results are based on the machinery developed in [AI] which employs the complexification of both the dynamical and the parameter spaces of the H\'enon family together with computer assistance.