The Critical Locus and Rigidity of Foliations of Complex Henon Maps

Abstract

We study Henon maps which are perturbations of a hyperbolic polynomial p with connected Julia set. We give a complete description of the critical locus of these maps. In particular, we show that for each critical point c of p, there is a primary component of the critical locus asymptotic to the line y = c. Moreover, primary components are conformally equivalent to the punctured disk, and their orbits cover the whole critical set. We also describe the holonomy maps from such a component to itself along the leaves of two natural foliations. Finally, we show that a quadratic Henon map taken along with the natural pair of foliations, is a rigid object, in the sense that a conjugacy between two such maps respecting the foliations is a holomorphic or antiholomorphic affine map.