A note on iterated maps of the unit sphere

Abstract

Let $\mathcal{C}(S^{m})$ denote the set of continuous maps from the unit sphere $S^{m}$ in $\mathbb{R}^{m+1}$ into itself endowed with the supremum norm. We prove that the set $\{f^n: f\in \mathcal{C}(S^{m})~\text{and}~n\ge 2\}$ of iterated maps is not dense in $\mathcal{C}(S^{m})$. This, in particular, proves that the periodic points of the iteration operator of order $n$ are not dense in $\mathcal{C}(S^m)$ for all $n\ge 2$, providing an alternative proof of the result that these operators are not Devaney chaotic on $\mathcal{C}(S^m)$ proved in [M. Veerapazham, C. Gopalakrishna, W. Zhang, Dynamics of the iteration operator on the space of continuous self-maps, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 149(1) (2021), 217--229].