Universality but no rigidity for two-dimensional perturbations of almost commuting pairs

Abstract

In this paper we consider two-dimensional dissipative maps of the annulus which are small perturbations of one-dimensional critical circle maps. It has been shown earlier that such perturbations admit an attractor which is a non-smooth topolgical circle - a "critical" circle. We study conjugacies of the maps that admit such attractors and show that although the maps exhibit universality - they approach a certain normal form when looked at small scales - two maps in general can not be smoothly comjugate on their critical attractors. This result extends the paradigm of "universality but no rigidity" in two dimensions, discovered by A. De Carvalho, M. Lyubich, M. Martens, to yet another class of dynamical systems.