Mildly dissipative diffeomorphisms of the disk with zero entropy

Abstract

We discuss the dynamics of smooth diffeomorphisms of the disc with vanishing topological entropy which satisfy the mild dissipation property introduced in [CP]. In particular it contains the H\'enon maps with Jacobian up to 1/4. We prove that these systems are either (generalized) Morse Smale or infinitely renormalizable. In particular we prove for this class of diffeomorphisms a conjecture of Tresser: any diffeomorphism in the interface between the sets of systems with zero and positive entropy admits doubling cascades. This generalizes for these surface dynamics a well known consequence of Sharkovskii's theorem for interval maps.