Reversing Symmetry Groups of Cat Maps

Abstract

Toral automorphisms are widely used (discrete) dynamical systems, the perhaps most prominent example (in 2D) being Arnold's cat map. Given such an automorphism M, its symmetries (i.e. all automorphisms that commute with M) and reversing symmetries (i.e. all automorphisms that conjugate M into its inverse) can be determined by means of number theoretic tools. Here, the case of GL(2,Z) is presented and the possible (reversing) symmetry groups are completely classified. Extensions to affine mappings and to k-(reversing) symmetries (i.e. (reversing) symmetries of the k-th power of M), and applications to the projective group PGL(2,Z) and to trace maps (compare math.DS/9901124), are briefly discussed.